Cover Me Up
by CatrionaMac
Summary: Five years after returning to Jackson, Ellie and Joel struggle with their changing feelings toward each other. Will the community accept their love? And when a dark figure from Joel's past appears, can their relationship survive what Joel must reveal to Ellie about himself? Joel/Ellie romance. Rated M for language and graphic sex.
1. Spring

**Spring**

I hummed as I rubbed wood oil into the stock of my little lever-action carbine. It was just a .22, so it didn't have a whole lot of stopping power when it came to fending off the infected, but it was handy for hunting squirrels and rabbit, and I'd once taken down a deer with a couple of quick, well-placed shots. More importantly, Joel had given it to me for my twentieth birthday, which made it one of my most precious possessions. I had gone through my post-hunting routine of cleaning the rifle barrel and wiping the steel down with a rag soaked in gun oil when I decided the stock was looking a little dull too. The wood was glowing from the treatment when I...I smelled smoke.

"Aw, fucking hell!" I dropped the rag on the table and ran for the kitchen, where smoke was pouring out of the stove. Grabbing a ratty dish towel, I wrenched the oven door open, coughing as I dragged the pan out. The rabbit I'd caught earlier was charred beyond recognition, and the dumplings I'd tried to make from a recipe I'd found in a library cookbook were just lumps of charcoal.

"Oh, no..." I moaned in frustration. I'd spent all afternoon tracking down that stupid rabbit, and I'd traded three more to the central commissary for flour and sugar. I set the hot roasting pan down on the stovetop, next to the suspicious-looking and probably equally failed pound cake I'd screwed up earlier.

"Crap." It was spring planting time, and Joel was coming off a long, hard week on farm duty. Everybody had to take a turn; mine was next week. I knew it was hot, backbreaking labor, and I'd really wanted to surprise Joel with a good meal tonight. The only problem was, I was a terrible cook. "It's a braise, Ellie," I muttered, repeating Maria's words to me. "It's impossible to mess it up." What the hell had I done wrong?

All right, she had told me I should cook it for two hours at two hundred and fifty degrees. But I'd gotten in later than I meant to, and it was getting late by the time I'd pulled the sadly flat pound cake out of the oven, and wasn't cooking it for half as long with twice the heat the same thing? I poked the charred lumps of meat halfheartedly with a fork. Apparently not.

Glumly, I opened the cupboard to assess our options. A dented can of twenty-five year old stew, or a couple of potatoes that I might be able to bake, if that cookbook had instructions on how to do it. I decided on the potatoes. Canned goods from before the pandemic all tasted uniformly awful at best, and would give you botulism at worst. The can wasn't rusty or bulging, but why take chances?

I flipped through _Texas Home Cooking_ for instructions on how to bake a potato. We had some fresh butter and sour cream from the dairy, maybe this wouldn't be a total disaster. "Fuck, no baked potato recipes." It was probably one of those things everybody just knew how to do before. In frustration, I winged the book across the room, almost hitting Joel in the head as he came into the kitchen.

"Hey!" He plucked the abused volume out of the air, his reflexes still quick as a cat's, despite his advanced age of somewhere-north-of-fifty-now-leave-me-alone. His words, not mine, obviously.

I looked down at his bare feet. He was holding his dirt-crusted workboots in his other hand. "Serves you right for sneaking up on me," I said with bad grace.

Joel's smile uncurled slowly on his weathered face. "You know, this is the best part of my day."

"What, sneaking up on me?" I was still trying to hold on to my anger, but that smile was making it hard to do.

"No." He looked down, almost like he felt shy or something. "I mean, comin' home to you. Even when you're throwin' things at me."

My stomach did a flip-flop. _Whoa. Where did that come from?_

He examined the book in his hand. "Texas Home Cooking?" He made a show of sniffing the smoky air in the kitchen. "It doesn't smell like anything I remember."

My face went red. I casually interposed my body between him and the disaster on the stovetop. "That's because it's not ready yet. Now go..."

He was looking right over my shoulder, damn it. Some days I really hated being short. I could see him take in the sad cake, the burned dumplings, the explosion of flour on the countertop that I hadn't yet cleaned up. He was trying to keep a straight face, but his shoulders started to shake.

I could feel my disappointment like a rock in my stomach. "Aw, Joel, don't laugh."

He enveloped me in a bonecrushing hug, still laughing. "Baby girl, you are a lotta things, but I'm startin' to think a cook ain't one of them."

"Fuck, Joel, let me go! You're all sweaty. And you stink." I pushed against his chest through the clammy t-shirt he was wearing.

He gave me an exaggerated, wet smack on the cheek before he turned me loose. "Gross," I said, wiping my cheek, but I couldn't help smiling. "Go shower and change. I'll sort these out." I pointed to the potatoes.

He yawned and pulled his wet t-shirt over his head, using it to mop his face. His chest was still broad and hard-muscled, lightly furred with graying hair and tapering down to his flat stomach and narrow waist. I could see the ugly scar from when he'd been impaled on the left side of his abdomen, still dark against his pale skin. _Not bad for a somewhere-north-of-fifty-now-leave-me-alone-year-old,_ I found myself thinking, and then I blushed when I realized I was staring at his naked chest and had missed whatever he'd just said. "What? I was...I was just admiring your farmer's tan." I cringed inwardly. _Of all the wisecracks I could have made. Admiring your farmer's tan? Why don't I just say I was checking you out? Because I wasn't, at all. That would be weird. Oh, god. This is weird._

Joel gave me a strange look. "I said, don't bother. I'm too tired to eat. All I really want is..." He trailed off as he looked past me to the cluttered countertop, a pained expression on his face. "Ellie? Is that...? Please tell me that's not the last bottle of beer."

"Uh...it's not the last bottle of beer." It was. I'd poured it into the pan with the rabbit on Maria's instructions, because apparently braising involved liquid of some kind.

Joel closed his eyes. My guilty tone was all the answer he needed. "I'm gonna shower and hit the hay, kiddo. It's been a long week." He left his filthy boots and sweat-soaked shirt on the kitchen floor and trudged upstairs.

_I can still fix this,_ I thought. I took Joel's boots and t-shirt out to the garage and dropped them near the laundry tub, then I grabbed the little basket with its precious cargo that I'd been saving for the grand finale. _Let's see how much beer these babies can buy me._

The water was running when I shrugged into my jacket and slipped out the door. I needn't have bothered with the basket; I ran into Maria on the front porch. She had just set down a sack next to the door, and she looked at me guiltily. "Shit. You caught me."

I pointed to the bag. "What's that?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I thought...after what happened with the roast chicken...I'm sure it went fine today, but just in case..."

My heart leapt. "Did you...?" I peeked into the sack, where two bottles of beer were nestled up against a collection of foil-wrapped packages. I hugged her so hard that I squeezed the breath out of her. "Jesus, Maria, you're a lifesaver!"

She looked embarrassed at my display of affection. Maria wasn't the touchy-feely type. "It's just some pot roast and mashed potatoes."

"And beer!" The bottles of homebrew that had been put up after last year's harvest were already starting to become scarce. Anybody could still go down to the main commissary and get a mug drawn from one of the community's kegs, but the bottles had been a limited-run experiment that turned out to be wildly popular. People liked being able to pull a cold beer out of their own refrigerators at the end of a hot day. As a result, the bottles that were left were trading dearly, when you could find them at all.

Maria shrugged casually. "You said you were out." Then she smiled, a wicked gleam in her eye. "I'll find some way to make it up to Tommy."

"Ugh, thanks. Now I have to scrub my brain." We'd stayed with Tommy and Maria long enough when we came back to Jackson for me to know that they had a very healthy sex life. Like, really healthy. Like, every night kind of healthy. And sometimes in the mornings too.

I remembered one night during our first month there I'd woken up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and I'd padded over to Joel's room. Even though this was back when I was still mad at him for lying to me about killing the Fireflies and Marlene, I knew the only way I'd get back to sleep was next to him. He was sprawled across the entire bed, wearing just his boxers, and snoring like a motor. I shoved his shoulder until he rolled over, and then I lay down facing away from him, pressing my back to his.

"Sarah?" he muttered, his voice still thick with sleep.

I sighed. I wish I didn't feel like I'd always be competing with Joel's dead daughter. It was a competition I'd never win.

I felt him turn toward me, curling his body around mine and wrapping his arm around my waist. He kissed the top of my head and inhaled deeply. "Ellie." He held me tight, and I smiled. Now maybe I could sleep.

That was when the sounds started coming from Tommy and Maria's bedroom. They weren't exactly trying to be quiet about it. My eyes flew open, and I could tell by the tension in Joel's body that he was wide awake too.

There was a certain part of Joel's body that was _really_ awake.

He rolled away from me like I was on fire and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Jesus, Tommy was a wild man, judging from the way Maria was moaning his name.

"Uh," I said, "I think I'm going to go back to my room..."

"Okay." Joel couldn't bring himself to look at me, but he said, "You gonna be okay?"

I tried to ignore the thumping from next door. "Yep. See you tomorrow."

"Night, baby girl."

I don't think either of us slept any more that night, because we were both hollow-eyed and cranky the next morning. After that, Joel started hounding Tommy about fixing up a house for us, so we'd have a place of our own, but it was a long three months staying with them, listening to that every night.

I looked at Maria's bag again, inhaling the delicious smell of pot roast. I had to repay her for this somehow. "Come in for a sec. I have something for you. Maybe you won't have to use up all your sexual favors."

"Ellie!" Maria sounded slightly scandalized. I don't know why, she was the one who started it.

"Oh, please. Like I don't know what goes on at your house."

Maria blushed. She actually blushed. I mentally punched the air. Score one for Ellie! I could make the badass leader of Jackson City blush. Ha!

She followed me into the kitchen and made a sound of dismay when she saw the burned mess on the stove. "Oh, no! What happened?"

"Don't ask," I said. "I don't know where I went wrong with the cake. It's all flat."

"Hm." Maria stuck her hand in the cake pan and dug out a piece with her fingers. She didn't hesitate before she put it in her mouth. Much, anyway."Actually, this tastes pretty good." She surveyed the clutter on the counter. "Did you use baking soda, or baking powder?"

"There's a difference? I thought it was just two names for the same thing."

Maria laughed. "Well, it's official. You're a disaster in the kitchen. I'd put you on commissary duty, just so you could learn, if it wasn't for..." She broke off.

_If it wasn't for the fact that I was infected,_ I finished mentally. For some reason, some people around here had a problem with someone infected handling their food. Even when Joel and I had proved years ago beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever mutated spores were in my system were not present in any numbers high enough to transmit to someone else. We'd been able to keep the secret of my immunity safe for the first couple of years, but a bandit attack a few years ago that left us with matching bullet wounds had forced us to confess. My blood had gotten into Joel's open wound when he was tending to mine, and we'd both been scared shitless that he would turn afterward. I might have accidentally yelled at the top of my lungs, "Fuck, Joel, don't touch me! I don't want to infect you!" Or something like that.

The town, predictably, kicked us out, and we'd spent the next week in a cave on the mountain above Jackson, waiting for the worst. Tommy was so relieved when we came back alive that I almost forgave him for letting the alarmist fuckers kick us out in the first place.

A visit to the town doc afterward showed no sign of infection in Joel's blood. There were still spores in mine, but the load was lower than the airborne spores everyone around here breathed every day. Not a high enough concentration to infect anyone, the doc said, unless they took a mind to drain me like a vampire. My saliva was clean, as were my other body fluids. "So, you know," he'd said, his face reddening, "all clear for...relations. If you want them."

"Jesus, Doc," I'd quipped, "How do you manage to deliver babies if you can't even talk about sex?"

"Ellie…" Joel's voice held a weary tone of warning.

Doc had smiled wryly. "No, she's right, Joel. I'm not much of an OB/GYN. I was a podiatrist before the pandemic, for pity's sake."

And that had been that. But even though Maria had called a town meeting where Doc had explained that although I was infected I was not _infectious_, there were still a lot of people in town who went out of their way to avoid contact with me. I'd mostly gotten used to it, but it did mean that my list of potential boyfriends was pretty empty.

"Don't worry about it, Maria," I said. "Joel's a good cook, and I can at least grill stuff." I'd gotten pretty good at cooking meat over a fire during our cross-country journey. It was the damn oven that baffled me, so here in Jackson, Joel did most of the cooking, and I did the cleanup afterwards. It was only fair. I guess Joel had picked up a few culinary tricks when he was raising Sarah.

"I want to thank you for this," I gestured to Maria's sack, where I'd put it on the counter, "so I'm going to share my haul with you and Tommy." I picked up the basket I'd carried in from the garage and proudly folded back the towel that was covering its contents.

"Ellie, you don't have to give me…" Maria's eyes lit up. "Are those strawberries?"

I grinned. "Yep." There were maybe four big handfuls of the tiny wild strawberries, ripe and red as little jewels against the white towel. A veritable gold mine, especially this early in the season.

"Oh, wow." Maria's face was reverent. "Can I…?" She reached toward the basket.

"I said I was sharing." I watched her face as she popped one of the berries into her mouth, a blissful smile spreading across her face as the tart sweetness hit her tongue. I knew exactly what she was tasting; I'd probably eaten more than I'd put in the basket this afternoon when I'd stumbled across the patch of wild berries curling along the ground next to a stream.

I carefully transferred half of the strawberries into a cracked cup and pressed it into Maria's hand. "Here. Tell Tommy I hope this makes up for the beer. And thanks for all your help, Maria. Sorry I'm such a shitty student."

At that moment, Joel wandered into the kitchen, yawning. His hair was wet, and he was wearing nothing but a thin bath towel wrapped low around his hips. I hadn't heard the water turn off. "Night, baby girl…" He froze when he saw Maria.

"Hey, Joel, you want to put some clothes on?" I was laughing. "I don't know how Maria is going to go back home to Tommy now that she's seen the magnificent sight of you in the nude."

Maria laughed, but gave me a sharp, almost knowing look, her eyebrows raised. What was that look? I wondered.

Joel's face colored. "Hi, Maria," he muttered, looking very uncomfortable.

Maria, still laughing, said, "I'll let myself out. Good night, you two." She cast one more smirking look my way before she left. I was going to have to corner her tomorrow and find out what the hell that was all about.

"You can't go to bed now!" I was almost hopping with excitement. "I have surprises for you!"

"Ellie, I don't have the energy for this right now." His stomach rumbled audibly.

"You're hungry. Go put some clothes on and come back." I steered him by his broad shoulders to the kitchen door.

As quickly as I could, I fixed two plates of Maria's pot roast and mashed potatoes. My mouth was watering by the time I plopped the plates down on the table. She'd even included a little cup of gravy, which I poured liberally over everything.

Joel ambled back downstairs in a pair of sweatpants and another one of his ratty plaid shirts.

We sat down at the table, and I handed Joel a fork. "Eat up."

Joel took a tentative bite, and his eyes closed. "Oh, my god."

"What? What's wrong? Did I put too much gravy on?" I felt so anxious I couldn't take a bite from my own plate.

Joel opened his eyes and looked at me, that slow, lazy smile spreading across his face again. "It's good. Really, really good. Did you make this, baby girl?"

I grinned in relief. Joel was happy. "Nope! Maria saved the day. Oh, that reminds me…" I jumped up from the table and returned, triumphantly setting a bottle of beer in front of him.

Now Joel's smile took up his whole face. I hadn't seen him look that delighted since...well, ever, really. I took the church key and popped the top off of the bottle before handing it to him. He took a long swig. "Oh. That is…" He smiled at me again and winked. "You know, I was lying earlier. _This_ is my favorite part of the day."

The wink threw me until I realized what he'd said. Then I punched him in the shoulder. "Jerk."

He laughed. "Eat your supper, baby girl."

I did. The pot roast was delicious, of course. As I ate, I stole glances at Joel. He had changed in the five years since we'd come to Jackson. There was something easier and more relaxed about him, and he didn't carry that haunted look around in his eyes so much any more. It was like the spring inside him that kept him wound so tight had uncoiled, just a little bit. He was less hard, I finally decided. Not that he couldn't still kick the ass of any and everyone in this town, but that he didn't feel like he needed to, so much. He was still strong, I could see it in his hard-muscled shoulders, even if he was old. Although, he wasn't that old. Funny. When I first met him, he'd seemed ancient to me; when I was fourteen, north-of-fifty might as well have been dead. Now, he was just...I don't know, just right.

"You gonna eat that, or just stare at me all night, Ellie?"

_Shit, he caught me. Was I just checking him out again? No, that would be weird._ I swallowed the bite I'd been chewing and almost choked. I shoveled more food into my mouth for an excuse not to answer.

He pushed his plate away. "Well…" He started to get up.

"No, not yet!" I said. Or actually, I said "Nah, moph neh," because my mouth was full of food.

"Ellie," he said, a pained expression on his face. "What have I told you about talking with your mouth full?"

I swallowed the enormous bite, and said, "Bad table manners, I know. But Joel, there's dessert!"

"You're kidding me." He laughed.

I jumped up from the table again. "I made it myself. It didn't turn out like it was supposed to, but Maria says it still tastes good, and I found this big patch of wild strawberries in the forest today, I'll show you where, it's a good place for hunting…" My run-on sentence continued while I cut big slices of cake for each of us and divided the strawberries between them. _Oh my god, Ellie, shut up, shut up, shut up,_ I said to myself. I was running on at the mouth like I did back when I'd first met Joel, too nervous in his presence to be comfortable with silence. _What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I so nervous? It's just Joel._

"You made this? Yourself?" he said. I nodded. He took a big bite of the cake, and didn't move his mouth for a second. My anxiety mounted as he slowly chewed, and then swallowed the bite with apparent difficulty. He didn't say anything.

I couldn't stand it any more. "Well?" I demanded.

"It's...it's…"

"God damn it!" I sat down, utterly deflated. "Maria said it was okay."

Joel grinned at me, an evil gleam in his eye. "I'm just fucking with you, Ellie. It tastes delicious."

I let my breath out and glared at him. "You...you asshole!"

He laughed again and took an enormous bite of cake. "Mmmmmm mmmmm." He rubbed his belly exaggeratedly.

I snorted. "Don't think that makes it up to me. Just for that, you get to do the cleanup."

He shrugged agreeably. "Tomorrow. Tonight I just want to go to sleep. After I finish this delicious cake, of course."

"Compliments won't get you off the hook." I frowned severely at him, trying not to laugh.

"Yes, ma'am. It was worth a try, though." Joel finished his last bite of cake and yawned a huge, jawcracking yawn. He looked down at my plate, which was almost untouched, and hesitated. "Ellie, I really am bushed. You mind if I don't wait for you?"

"Go ahead," I said. "I'll be up after a while." I needed time to think, anyway, to figure out why I'd been so damn jumpy tonight.

"Okay." He stood and came over to kiss me goodnight. Usually he just dropped a kiss on the top of my head, or gave me a quick peck on my cheek, but tonight I was distracted, so I was moving my head when he leaned in to kiss my cheek. His lips landed right at the corner of my mouth and stayed there longer than usual, more from surprise than anything else, I think. My lips pursed of their own accord, kissing him back.

_Oh._

He stood up again and cleared his throat. "Night, baby girl." Was it just my imagination, or did his voice sound as strained as I felt? He walked upstairs without looking back at me.

I sat there in the gathering dark, still feeling stunned. When Joel's lips had touched mine, an unexpected jolt of electricity had run through my body and torn the lid off a simmering cauldron inside me, and I realized in that moment that I wanted him to kiss me. Really kiss me. Joel was my best friend, and there was no-one on earth I'd rather spend time with; I loved him like that. He was also a surrogate father, and I loved him like a daughter too. But this was new. This was...

I'd been nervous not just because of the cooking, or the towel, but because somewhere along the line I'd gone and fallen in love with him.


	2. Summer (Part 1)

**Summer (Part 1)**

"Ellie!" Joel called up the stairs. "Hurry up! We're gonna miss the beginning of the movie!"

"I said I was coming!" I yelled. I looked back at the mirror and tore the ponytail holder out of my hair again. Nope. With my thin red hair down around my shoulders, it was just more obvious how unevenly I'd cut the ends the last time I'd given myself a trim. Up in the ponytail it was. At least it was clean.

_This must have been what life was like before,_ I thought. Movies and dances, getting ready for dates. I'd seen enough movies about it, but it still all seemed unreal to me. Before the pandemic, a girl probably didn't need to find a place to hide a pistol. I turned to the bed, where my weapons were laid out, considering. I still had the first pistol Joel had given me, a little 9mm. The snub .454 revolver next to it was one I'd found on a dead bandit a few years back; Joel said it was an Alaskan bear pistol, whatever that meant. Actually trying to shoot a bear with a pistol that was totally inaccurate except at short range seemed like the height of idiocy to me, but what did I know. Before the pandemic, people liked to get their kicks in weird ways. I kept the thing mostly because Joel had told me I'd never be able to shoot it without knocking myself over, and it had made me mad enough to prove him wrong. He wasn't though, not completely. The thing kicked like a motherfucker. The .38 revolver was a little more my size, so I tucked it into the waistband of my jeans and pulled my shirt over it.

The shirt...I didn't know if the shirt was a good idea. Maria had found it for me and insisted I wear it, but it was so completely not my style that I was sure Joel would know something was up. It was made of some kind of blue-spangled, clingy fabric that we can't make any more, and though the neckline was relatively modest, it dipped low in the back, almost to my waist. I couldn't wear a bra with it, and I felt really exposed, even with the two flimsy ties that spanned the naked space across my back. At least it wasn't sleeveless. The fluttering, three-quarter-length sleeves just covered up my ugly white bite scar.

I would have taken the thing off and put on a t-shirt, except Maria had threatened to tell Joel straight out I was in love with him if I didn't wear it. I believed her; you didn't fuck around with Maria.

The day after my big realization, I had tracked Maria down to ask her what those smirks had been all about.

"You tell me," she said.

And I did. I couldn't stop myself. I told Maria all about how Joel had almost kissed me the night before, and how I'd realized I was in love with him, and probably had been for a long time.

Maria had grinned at me. "Ha! I knew it! All those cooking attempts."

"Hey, I was just trying to do something nice for him." I said.

"Exactly. That's what you do when you love someone. And Ellie," Maria gave me a knowing look. "No red-blooded woman could live with someone who looks as good as Joel still does without wanting to jump his bones."

"Jesus, Maria!" I felt my face turn red.

"Well?" She said to me, expectantly.

"Yeah," I mumbled. I'd barely slept the night before, kept awake by feverish fantasies of Joel's lips on my body.

"Ellie!" Joel's voice shook me out of my memories. There was a degree of pleading in his voice. "It's Indiana Jones!"

_Well, it's now or never,_ I thought.

I ran down the stairs, saying, "Sorry, I couldn't decide which gun to bring..." I stopped when I saw the frozen expression on Joel's face. He was staring at me like he'd never seen me before. Beneath his bearded jaw, I saw the muscles of his throat bunch as he swallowed hard. As I passed him, I heard him make a strangled sound as he caught sight of my exposed back.

_Well, I'll be damned. Maria was right about the shirt._ I smiled in satisfaction and turned back to where he was still standing like a statue at the base of the stairs.

"Are you coming or not? Indiana Jones?"

"Yeah," he said, looking a little dazed.

My body felt like it was buzzing with excitement. We might just pull this off after all.

They were showing the movie at the old VFW hall. One of the old-timers had found and fixed up a digital projector so we could watch the town's collection of DVDs big-screen style. But we only had one projector bulb, and it had a limited lifespan, so the projector only got hauled out for special occasions. Tonight was the start of our three-day midsummer festival, a welcome break between the hard labor seasons of spring planting and harvest. The commissary cooks had been working for the last week making special pastries and dishes for the feasts we'd have after the dancing. But the movie was what kicked each evening off, and this year they were showing all three Indiana Jones movies, which I'd never seen before. I think there was a fourth one, but Joel said it wasn't worth considering.

Joel had been looking forward to the movies since they'd announced the pick, a couple weeks ago. "I loved Indiana Jones when I was a kid," he'd said.

"What, way back in the twentieth century? How old are you again, like a hundred?" I'd quipped at him. And then I'd kicked myself. _Good job, Ellie. Remind Joel he's way older than you. Way to help your cause._

I think I was my own worst enemy during those first few months after I realized I loved Joel, because I couldn't stop teasing him. About everything. I could tell I was starting to genuinely annoy him when he started turning surly—well, more surly—and avoiding me, which was pretty much the opposite of the reaction I was going for. I finally turned to Maria for help, and together we'd cooked up this scheme around the midsummer festival. I went over it in my mind one more time. _Shirt, check. Sit close during the movie and hold his hand. The dance. Wait for the song. Go outside for some air, and let the magic happen._

All right, as plans go, it wasn't terribly complicated. But the fact I had to come up with a plan at all only proved how desperate and out of my element I was. Before my big realization, Joel and I had gotten to the point where we were so comfortable together. When he had finally told me the truth about what had happened in Salt Lake City, I'd been furious, and heartbroken that the chance for me to be part of a cure was gone forever. But there was also a part of me that was in awe at what he'd done. That he loved me so much, he'd save me and the rest of humanity could go fuck itself. He was fully willing to sacrifice his own life to protect me, but he would never be willing to sacrifice me, for anything. And I realized, had our positions been reversed, I would have done exactly what he had done, up to and including killing Marlene. No one would take him away from me. It had been a powerful realization, and it had allowed me to forgive him finally. We'd gone through some horrendously bad shit together, but we'd come out the other side and we still had each other.

Now, throwing the prospect of sex into the equation just made me feel like we were starting all over again at day one, with me trying my hardest to make a connection and him doing his dead level best to ignore me and keep himself closed off. I hadn't made any confessions or advances to him yet, but I didn't think he saw me that way, as a woman to be desired, and I wondered if he ever would.

And yet...we had lived here for five years now, and he'd never even looked at another woman. Not once. And it wasn't like he hadn't had opportunities. Like Maria said, Joel still looked good, and I wasn't the only one who'd noticed it. He said coming home to me was the best part of his day. Surely that meant something. Plus there was his reaction to the shirt.

We didn't miss the beginning of the movie, but we didn't get very good seats either. We were stuck way in the back, on the end of a row, but that was okay. Even after five years settled here, I got nervous if I couldn't see all the exits in a room, and having my back to the wall was a plus. Joel would not stop fidgeting during the first half of the movie, and I spent the entire time trying to move closer to him while he inched away until he was almost falling off of his chair.

_Fuck this,_ I thought. _This is not working._ When the part in the movie came where Indy gets pushed into a snake pit, I lunged for Joel's hand and held on for dear life. He tried to pull away at first, but I tried to look like I was scared.

He leaned over and murmured in my ear, "You okay, baby girl?"

"Yeah, snakes just freak me out." I whispered back.

He grunted, but squeezed my hand and moved closer to me, allowing me to lean up against his hard shoulder. I relaxed my death grip on his hand, and he continued to hold mine loosely for the rest of the movie, rubbing the pad of his thumb slowly across my knuckles. I don't think he even realized he was doing it, but it was all I could concentrate on. I still have no idea how that movie ended. His thumb was dry and callused, but his touch was gentle, and by the time the credits were rolling, every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire. I was dazed and a little bereft when his presence at my side was suddenly gone, and I realized he was standing up and looking down at me, a half smile on his lined face. He looked like he'd just asked me a question.

"What?"

"I said, c'mon. They gotta put the chairs up for the dance." I looked around the room. People were folding up the chairs and stacking them against the walls. I was the only one still sitting there like an idiot. "You feelin' all right, Ellie?"

I stood up. "Yeah...yes." I shook my head to clear it. "Good movie, huh?"

Joel unfurled that full smile on me, and my heart almost stopped. _Damn._ "Still good. But the part about the alien invasion is my favorite."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Me too. That was the best."

Joel snorted with laughter. "I knew you weren't watching it. You've been so distracted lately." He smiled good-naturedly, but I thought I detected a tightness around his eyes as he looked me up and down. "Well...whoever he is, I hope he's here tonight to appreciate how good you look."

"I..." What? Joel thought I'd done all this...for someone else? I don't know what threw me more, the fact that I'd been transparent enough that he knew I was nursing a secret crush, or the fact that he thought it could be anyone besides him. I had to find Maria and ask her how to manage this latest snag. "Yeah, I guess he's here tonight," I finally muttered. The music started up, and a few early birds took to the dance floor.

His eyes widened in shock, but he covered it quickly. "My god, I was right. I knew something was up with you. " Joel shook his head in mock sadness. "You're all grown up, baby girl. I guess it was just a matter of time before someone else came along and took you off my hands. Who's the lucky guy?"

The conversation was just getting weird. "Joel..."

"Jooooooel!" A woman's voice interrupted us, setting my teeth on edge. It was Christina, a forty-something blonde widow who'd been trying to sink her hooks into Joel almost as long as we'd been here. She could cook and sew pretty well, but she was useless with a gun. I hated her guts.

"Well, now, doesn't Ellie look nice tonight?" She smiled at me, but directed her comments to Joel, like she always did. She loved to treat me like a kid, so I fucked with her like I always did.

"Yeah, I've been thinking of starting a sex trade business, and I'm trying out my new look."

Christina's smile froze, and she turned to Joel like I wasn't even standing there. "Your little girl sure is a handful, Joel. I don't know how you manage all on your own."

"He only spanks me when I've been really bad," I said.

Before I knew it, Joel had a hard grip on my shoulder and was steering me away from Christina. "Ellie, the woman was only trying to be nice to you."

"Ow, Joel, fucking let go of me!" Heads turned our way as I shook off his grip. "And she was not trying to be nice to me, she was trying to be nice to you," I said in a lower voice.

Joel closed his eyes like he did when I tried his patience. Which, come to think of it, was a lot. "Don't you think that would be a nice change for me? For once?"

I was speechless. I knew I'd been kind of a shit to him for the past few months, but did he just...was he saying that he actually wanted to...I mean, nice wasn't really my style. Did he want another woman to be _nice_ to him? I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. How long had he felt like this? Had I just been getting in the way of him having a normal relationship with someone else all these years? Was he really just waiting for me to leave? "Fuck you, Joel." I tried to cover up my hurt with anger, my trusty fallback, but I was too late. He'd already seen something in my eyes that I couldn't hide.

"Ellie..."

I turned on my heel. "I'm getting a beer. Have fun with Christina."

I pushed through the crowd of people in the hall, barely registering faces or greetings. My ears were ringing. It wasn't until I felt the edges of my vision starting to go black that I realized I'd forgotten to breathe. I gasped to fill my aching lungs and the sounds of people laughing and talking rushed back around me.

"Light or dark?"

I looked up. I was leaning on the bar in the corner of the hall. Sanjay, who was manning the kegs tonight, repeated the question. "Light or dark, Ellie? Hey, you okay?"

"Dark. Definitely dark."

Sanjay put a cup in my hand, and I stared at it for a second like I had no idea what it was for. "Ellie, are you sure you're all right?"

"I..."

Sanjay turned to the other man behind the counter. "Maurice, cover for me for a few."

Maurice yelled, "Are you fucking with me Sanjay? Look at the line! Where the fuck are you going?"

Sanjay hopped over the counter. "Thanks, Maurice." He took my arm and led me away.

I let Sanjay steer me through the crowd. He and I ended up on guard duty together a lot; wall defense was my primary job here, as was his. He was a quiet man in his mid-thirties, but he was a total badass with a sniper rifle or a bow, and there weren't many other people here in Jackson I'd trust guarding my back more than him. We'd reached a quiet corner of the hall, and he unfolded a chair and pushed me down into it, then set another up for himself.

He didn't say much while I sipped my beer and watched Joel laughing with Christina across the room. She touched his arm, and Joel leaned forward and whispered something in her ear, which made her giggle. I wanted the ground to open and swallow them both up. Finally, Sanjay said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

A Bob Wills song came on, _San Antonio Rose_. I watched Joel take Christina's hand and start two-stepping her around the dance floor. "No, I do not," I said. I finished my beer and Sanjay took the cup from my hand and set it on the floor.

A new song started, a slow song I didn't recognize. Sanjay stood up and held his hand out. "Then do you want to dance with me?"

Christina was swaying with her head on Joel's shoulder. I couldn't see his face, but she had the biggest shit-eating grin I'd ever seen plastered across her face.

I looked up at Sanjay and took his hand. "Yes." His white teeth flashed against his dark skin.

He led me out onto the dance floor directly across from where Joel was dancing with Christina, and then turned me around so I was facing away from them. He put his hands at the small of my back and drew me close. Tentatively, I put my arms around his waist and rested my chin on his shoulder. Sanjay was around my height, so we were pretty much cheek-to-cheek.

"Hey, Ellie," Sanjay's breath tickled my ear. "You look really pretty tonight."

Tears burned my eyes. At least someone noticed. "Thanks, Sanjay." My breath hitched and I tried to hold back a sniffle, but he heard it anyway.

"Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I think I can help you out. Joel is already shooting daggers my direction. Don't jump, let's see if he comes over here when I put my hand on your back."

My heart leapt. "Sanjay..." He was going to try and make Joel jealous? I didn't know what to say. "How did you know?"

He laughed. "I have eyes in my face. And besides, Maria decided she needed a co-conspirator, just in case your old man was feeling intractable."

"He's not old. He's just well-seasoned." I could feel a laugh bubbling up, and I clutched breathlessly at Sanjay's shoulders. The game was still on!

"Whatever. Try and keep him from punching my lights out, okay? Ready for the hand?"

I nodded and jumped anyway. "Fuck, your hand is cold, Sanjay," I whispered in his ear.

I caught another flash of white teeth in my peripheral vision, and Sanjay shook with laughter. "Sorry, Ellie."

We danced for a few more moments. The suspense was killing me. "Did it work?"

"No." Sanjay frowned in disappointment. "He stopped for a second, but then Christina caught his attention again." He pulled back his head and looked me in the eyes. "I think this calls for drastic measures. And seriously, please keep Joel from punching me. He scares the fuck out of me." Sanjay closed his liquid brown eyes, leaned forward, and kissed me on the lips.

We both tensed, waiting for Joel's hand to come down on one of our shoulders like a hammer, but nothing happened. Finally, Sanjay stopped kissing me and looked over my shoulder.

I couldn't stand it. "What's he doing now?"

"Huh," Sanjay said. "He's...uh," He craned his neck. "I can't see them." He looked at me in dismay. "Fuck, Ellie, I'm sorry. Maria and I were both sure that would work."

The slow song had ended, to be replaced with Journey's _Don't Stop Believing_. I thought the irony might kill me. I nodded at Sanjay, unable to form a coherent word.

"Aw, Ellie, don't look so down." We moved off the dance floor again. "Why don't you go outside and get some air. I'll bring you another beer and see if I can find Maria, and we can figure out the next plan of attack." He pointed to the doors leading out onto the back patio.

"Okay." I moved dejectedly through the crowd and out into the warm summer night. The patio was strung with lights, but I wanted the dark. I didn't want to talk to anyone right now. I found a railing in one overgrown corner where I could brood in private behind a screen of foliage.

There were bursts of laughter and conversation from others on the patio, but I didn't pay them any attention until I heard my name.

"Hey, did you all see Sanjay kissing Infected Ellie?" There was a round of drunken laughter. "I guess he wins the pool. What's it up to now…a thousand rounds?"

No. I'd had enough for one night. A girl can only tolerate so much. There was a fucking betting pool around who was going to kiss me first? What else were they betting on? What assholes. And Sanjay...I'd deal with him later. But the speaker and his two friends were conveniently standing just on the other side of the bushes where I was concealing myself, and it was only a matter of a few seconds to step out, spin him around by the shoulder, and slam my fist into his nose. It made a satisfying crunch as it broke and blood spurted everywhere. He fell to the ground, moaning. _Well, so much for this shirt_, I thought, and then I was off. I elbowed the second guy in the stomach, and when he bent over, I used his back to launch myself at the third dude, who went down like a felled tree. I was sitting on his chest and punching him in the face while he yelled "Someone get this crazy bitch off of me!" when an arm like a steel band wrapped around my midsection and lifted me up, still clawing for the guy's face.

"Ellie, be still." It was Joel. I stopped fighting him and he set my on my feet.

"Does someone want to tell me what the fuck is happening here?" It was Maria, in full-on leader mode, and her eyes looked fucking scary. Maria didn't tolerate fighting in Jackson, and I knew I was in for a whole ration of shit from her.

"Little bitch just jumped us for no fucking reason, Maria! She's out of control," said the broken-nose guy. Pete. I finally recognized him as one of the dam engineers.

I would have punched him again if Joel hadn't still had his arm locked around my waist. "You fucking asshole! Why don't you tell Maria about the fucking pool you fuckers were talking about!" To my total embarrassment, I started sobbing. "You have one for first guy to fuck me, too? How much is that up to, Sanjay?"

Sanjay's face was ashen. "Ellie, I didn't…"

Joel interrupted him, his voice shaking with fury. "You don't get to talk to her, you piece of shit."

Maria put her hand on Joel's arm. "Let's all just calm down here. Sanjay, is Ellie telling the truth? Are you assholes betting on who gets into her pants first?"

Sanjay looked miserable. "Yeah, there's a pool. But, Ellie, I swear to god…"

I turned around and buried my face in Joel's chest, my shoulders shaking. Joel was right. People sucked.

"Shut the fuck up," Maria said. "You pieces of shit are on fucking latrine duty until further notice. Because that kind of shit will NOT fly here, do you understand?"

They didn't answer.

"DO. I. MAKE. MYSELF. FUCKING. CLEAR?" Maria said.

This time there was a grudging chorus of assent from the assholes. I could feel Joel leading me away to the other side of the patio, behind a screen of bushes. We were alone.

"Hey, baby girl. You all right?" His hand was on my chin, raising my face up. I sighed. Tonight was an official disaster. I was so fucking tired. My knuckles were split, and I could feel blood trickling down my leg from a scrape on my knee. On top of that, I'd tried everything, everything I could think of, and Joel was still talking to me like I was his fucking daughter. I gave up.

"I'm fine. You should go find Christina again." I remembered the happy grin on his face when he'd been dancing with her. And I wanted him to feel like that, not like he had to worry about me all the time.

"Christina?" Joel sighed. "Nah, that's okay. I don't think she's speakin' to me, anyway."

"Jesus, Joel, what did you do?"

"Oh," he scrubbed his hand through his silver beard. "She was makin' some...uneducated comments about you and Sanjay," he glowered at Sanjay's name. "And I told her that you had more sense in your little finger than she had in her entire body. After she told me to go fuck myself, I came out here for some air."

I smiled, but the feeling was bittersweet. So...none of that stuff that happened earlier had mattered. The Christina situation would have resolved itself the second she revealed herself to be a racist asshole. Joel hated a lot of people indiscriminately, but he didn't give a fuck about skin color. There weren't enough people left to care about shit like that.

To add insult to injury, the soft plucked strains of a solo guitar started playing over the patio speakers. It was the song. The one I'd been waiting for. The one I specifically asked Maria to make sure got played.

_A heart on the run keeps a hand on a gun, it can't trust anyone  
I was so sure what I needed was more, tried to shoot out the sun_

Tears spilled out of my eyes again. I'd messed everything up. I'd wanted to dance with Joel to this song. That was it, that was my whole big plan. What a fucking idiot.

_In days when we raged, we flew off the page, such damage was done  
But I made it through, 'cause somebody knew I was meant for someone_

"Ellie, please don't cry." Joel put an arm around my waist and held me, brushing my tears away with the knuckles of his other hand. I knew what violence those hands were capable of, and I leaned into his gentle touch, rubbing my cheek into his palm.

_So girl, leave your boots by the bed, we ain't leavin' this room  
Till someone needs medical help or the magnolias bloom  
It's cold in this house and I ain't going out to chop wood  
So cover me up, and know you're enough to use me for good._

I couldn't help myself. I kissed Joel's hand. He paused for the barest of seconds, and then his hand on my waist moved upward to stroke the soft skin of my bare back.

_Put your faith to the test when I tore off your dress in Richmond all high  
But I sobered up, I swore off that stuff, forever this time._

I could feel his body vibrating like a steel spring. "Ellie…"

_In the old lover's scene, I thought it'd be me who helped him get home  
But home was a dream, one that I'd never seen, till you came along._

"Yes." I didn't know if I was answering him or giving him permission. It didn't matter. I closed my eyes. I was afraid to look at him. If only I could have suspended this moment forever, I would have. I didn't know what I would see when I looked in his face, but right now—the warmth of his body pressed up against me and his hand on my face—I wanted that to last forever.

_So girl hang your dress up to dry, we ain't leavin' this room  
Till Percy Priest breaks open wide and the river runs through  
Carries this house on the stones like a piece of driftwood  
So cover me up, and know you're enough to use me for good._

Joel kissed my forehead, but I gasped when I felt his lips press against the corner of my eyelid, kissing my tears away. He kissed both of my eyes and my cheeks, and then...I could feel his breath on my mouth, but he was holding himself back.

All I had to do was raise my chin a tiny bit to meet his lips, and then he was kissing me, really kissing me, full on the lips. My heart was pounding so loudly I thought he must be able to hear it. As he kissed me, I parted my lips and touched the tip of my tongue to his upper lip. He drew a long, shaking breath, and then I felt his lips part and his tongue slid into my mouth, so slowly and sensuously I thought I was going to cry again. I breathed into his mouth, not willing to stop kissing him for even a second, and twined my arms around his neck to pull his head down harder against mine. I wanted more. I wanted everything he had. He turned his head to the side and leaned his forehead against mine, his breath harsh against my cheek.

"Fuck, Ellie…"

"Joel," I turned his head back and kissed him again, as hard as I could, pushing my tongue deep into his mouth. "Take me home, right fucking now."

He looked into my eyes for what felt like a year, his face alight with lust, but still cautiously controlled. He wanted me—my heart soared! He wanted me!—but he was searching my face to make sure I was certain, to make sure he was who I wanted. "What about whoever you wore this shirt for?"

I laughed breathlessly and bit his lower lip when I kissed him again. "It's you. Of course it's you, you fucking idiot. Now..." I punctuated each word with another kiss. "Take. Me. Home."

He let loose that devastating smile when he finally nodded and said, "Yes, ma'am."

_So girl leave your boots by the bed, we ain't leavin' this room  
Till someone needs medical help or the magnolias bloom  
It's cold in this house and I ain't goin' out to chop wood  
So cover me up, and know you're enough to use me for good._

I'll be damned. My plan worked after all.

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**Author's Note**

The song referenced in this chapter (and the inspiration for the story title) is "Cover Me Up," by Jason Isbell, and man, do I ever recommend his album Southeastern. I do not own the song or the characters from The Last of Us in the story. All of the other work is my own.

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed so far.


	3. Summer (Part 2)

**Author's Note**

This chapter contains graphic sexual content. If that's not your cup of tea, please skip it! Everybody else, you're welcome.

Also, just a warning that the next update will probably not be out quite so quickly as the previous chapters, and apologies for that. Thanks to all my readers and reviewers!

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**Summer (Part 2)**

We walked the mile and a half back home with our arms around each other, leaning against each other like we were in danger of falling over. We didn't talk, but we couldn't stop touching each other. I ran my hand up and down the smooth muscles of his back and shoulders, and his hand rested on the exposed small of my back, making little circles on my bare skin. We passed a few other people on our way, but the streets were mostly empty; nobody wanted to miss the food after the dance. Joel's hand slipped through the open back of the shirt and he ran the backs of his fingers up my side, brushing over my ribs and the side of my breast, which made me giggle and shiver at the same time.

He made a frustrated sound. "C'mon." He moved his hand down to my waist and used it to steer me into a darkened alley, where he pressed my shoulders back against the wall and crashed his lips down on mine, kissing me with a ferocity that bordered on desperation. The rough brick dug into my shoulderblades as he traced a line of kisses down my jaw, and I couldn't suppress a moan when I felt his teeth sink into my neck, his tongue moving in hot circles against the sensitive skin.

Joel pulled back and looked at me, his eyes dark with desire. "Jesus fuck, Ellie. You keep making noises like that, and I may not make it home."

I smiled back at him, breathing hard. "You better try, old man. I'm not going to let my first time be a quickie up against the wall."

He winced, and I kicked myself. I'd gone and called him old man again, I realized. But it turns out, that wasn't what bothered him. "Ellie, baby g—" he stopped himself from calling me baby girl, but only just. "Baby." That was better. A little less loaded, anyway. "I probably shouldn't...Are you sure you don't want your first time to be with someone...a little more your own age?" He stepped back from me, his frown drawing deep lines on his face.

Damn it. What now? Why was he pulling back from me again? I studied his face. The desire was obviously still there, so that was all right. And there was a longing in his eyes that made me ache. I understood that one too. We both needed this human connection. But there was also fear, and...was that shame? Was Joel ashamed that he wanted me?

"Joel," I said slowly, "do you love me?"

He closed his eyes and blew his breath out his nose. "You know I do Ellie. But I—"

"Then shut up and listen to me." I chose my words carefully. I had a feeling I only had one chance to get this right, and so much hung in the balance that I was almost shaking. "You may be old as fuck, but I _want_ you, Joel. _You_. There is no other man on the fucking planet I would choose. You're my whole world. There _is_ no one else for me. But if you don't feel the same way about me..."

He kissed me, hard, and my head thumped back against the wall. It made me see stars. "I'm gonna spank you for calling me old as fuck." The combination of humor and lust in his eyes made me shiver.

I bit his lip again and breathed into his mouth, "Fuck, yes."

There was no turning back now, and no more talking. We somehow managed to stumble back to our house and upstairs to Joel's bedroom. His hands were everywhere now, squeezing my shoulders, caressing my ass. His beard was silky against the skin of my neck when he kissed me there again, and I could feel his broad hands fumbling with the ties across the back of my shirt. One was knotted, and I felt him grunt in frustration against my neck.

"Just break it," I gasped.

His shoulder muscles bunched under my hands as he pulled, and then there was a ripping noise as the tie broke free. He stepped back and said, "Take it off for me."

Without a moment of hesitation, I lifted the shirt over my head and threw it across the room, standing there in front of him naked from the waist up while he raked me with his hot gaze. I found myself trying to cover up, not my breasts, but the scar on my right forearm, with my left hand.

He grabbed both of my hands and pulled them apart, turning my arm over to expose the bite scar. "Ellie, you're perfect." I gasped as he ran his tongue from my right shoulder to the inside of my elbow, and then over the white mess of scar tissue that comprised my bite wound. "This," he kissed the scar, "brought you to me. Don't feel like you have to hide it. Not from me. Okay?"

I nodded, unable to speak. He'd known. He'd known how much I hated that scar, and how self-conscious I was about it, and he had made it beautiful with just a few words. How did he do that? And then his mouth was on my nipple, and I couldn't spare any more of my brain to think about my scar because holy fuck, that felt good. I moaned again as I felt his teeth lightly scrape over the sensitive nerve endings. I felt a little woozy.

"You wanna disarm for me, darlin'?" I opened my eyes to see that slow smile curling across his face again. God, I would do anything to see that smile.

I laughed as I slid the revolver out of the waistband of my jeans and set it on his dresser. "For a while there I thought I was going to have to use this to get you into bed."

He snorted. "I bet you coulda taken me."

"You know I can." I was still smiling, but I let my words take on a heated double meaning.

Joel's eyes smoldered back at me, and he drew his shirt over his head in one fluid movement, exposing his broad chest. I shivered. His body was crisscrossed with old scars, physical evidence of the price he'd paid for surviving twenty-five years after the world went to shit. An old gunshot wound made a silver circle on his left bicep, and his chest was marked with more slash wounds than I could count. The place where he'd been impaled still showed up dark purple against the hard muscles of his abdomen.

"Oh..." My eyes filled with tears, and I found myself flying across the room and holding on to him as tightly as I could. His life had been so fucking hard, and it wasn't fair. My hands touched him everywhere, roaming over the flat planes of his stomach, his ribs, the hard expanse of his chest, running my fingers through the crisp graying hair there. I wanted to feel every scar. Every wound that had shaped him into the man I loved so much had a story, and I wanted to learn every one.

"My girl," he breathed into my hair. I kissed his chest. My head only came up to his chin, so it was easy for me to trace each of the scars on his chest with my tongue, and I knelt to kiss the puncture wound on his abdomen. In this position, my face was level with the hard bulge in his jeans, but when I reached out for the button on his pants, he leaned down and raised me up again. "Not yet." He kissed me then, his tongue pushing long, lazy strokes into my mouth as I slid mine into his. Jesus, what his tongue was doing to me. I almost cried out when he stopped again and stepped back.

"Take off your jeans. Let me see you, Ellie," he said.

_Okay, this is it_, I thought. Funny, I'd been more nervous about him seeing my scar than my breasts, but I was really nervous about being completely naked in front of him. I swallowed and looked down, trying to hide my anxiety, but Joel was there, tipping my face up to look at him again.

"You're perfect," he said again. "Don't be afraid."

I couldn't speak past the lump in my throat, so I just nodded and unbuttoned my jeans. I pulled the zipper down and skimmed jeans and underwear down over my hips in what I hoped was something reminiscent of the fluid movement Joel had used when he took his shirt off. _Don't get tangled around my ankles,_ I prayed silently. I stepped out of the pants, slipping out of my shoes and socks at the same time. _Not bad._

Joel was looking at me like he wanted to eat me alive. "Christ." His eyes raked over me from head to toe. "Do you have any idea..." his hoarse voice cracked, and he swallowed. A new look of fear crept into his eyes, and for just a second he looked young and lost.

"Please tell me what you're thinking." The anxiety in my voice snapped his eyes back to my face, and he smiled sheepishly.

He reached for me and held me so tightly I could barely breathe. "Just didn't know...I didn't know I could want anything so much."

_Oh. That's all right, then._ He laid me gently back onto his bed and said "Don't move."

He left the room, and I heard him rummaging around in the bathroom. It was like that point in the romantic comedies when the guy goes looking desperately for a condom, and can't find one, so he decides to do it anyway. But surely that couldn't be what Joel was doing. Every condom I'd ever seen was too old and dry to be any use. We used to shoot them at each other like rubber bands back in the Zone. Joel and I would just use the pull out method, like everybody else, right?

Joel was back, and he knelt at the foot of the bed. I felt a cold washcloth on my right shin. I would have kicked him in the face from the shock if he hadn't had a good grip on my ankle. "You didn't tell me you were hurt. Let me clean you up, baby." I felt the sting of alcohol on my scraped knee and shivered at Joel's gentle touch.

"You should have seen the other guys," I said.

I felt the puff of Joel's breath on my thigh as he laughed. "Believe me, I did. Remind me to always stay on your good side." He finished tying gauze around my knee and kissed it. "There."

He kissed my other knee, and then moved higher, kissing my right thigh, and then my left, making slow circles with his tongue on my skin. I forgot all about my scraped knee, especially when I felt his face hovering above the curly hair between my thighs. His hands slowly pushed my knees apart so that they fell to the bed on either side of him, and I felt myself exposed to his gaze.

"Ellie." I could feel his breath on the slick flesh between my thighs. I was biting my lip, but I still cried out when he parted the lips of my sex with his big fingers and I felt his mouth on the tiny sensitive nub there. Oh, fuck. I'd read about this, but reading was one thing and actually experiencing it was another. I couldn't believe how hot and wet his tongue was on me. I'd thought his beard would scratch my sensitive skin, but no, it just heightened all the other sensations he was causing. I felt a gathering pressure and heat down low, below the pit of my stomach, and I realized an orgasm was building up, but it was like no orgasm I'd ever given myself with my own fingers. I couldn't believe how quickly the pressure grew inside me as he worked my clit. And then I felt him slip one finger inside me, and I bucked my hips against his mouth, no longer able to control my own body. I was screaming his name when my orgasm crashed over me, leaving me shaking and crying in its wake.

Joel kissed his way back up my shuddering body, finishing with a satisfied smack on my lips. I tasted myself on him. It wasn't so bad.

"Wow," I said finally, when my breathing was under control. It was all I could say.

He laughed beside me. "Now that," he said, "was fucking perfect."

I started to laugh, and once I started I couldn't stop.

"You all right, there, darlin'?" Joel said, his teeth white against his lips. "You know, you're awful cute when you giggle."

"Oh, my god, I can't believe that just fucking happened!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, still giggling. "Makes me want to..." I gasped. Joel's hand was trailing lazily from my sternum to my pelvis, and I shuddered when he brushed the tuft of hair at the top of my sex. "Oh..."

"Makes you want to what, baby?" He was propped on one elbow next to me, watching my face intently.

"Kiss you," I whispered. And I did. I reached out and pulled his head down to mine and kissed him with a wild abandon that soon had us both out of breath again.

I felt Joel's muscles bunch as he rolled over on top of me, and then he was a hard wall of muscle holding me down, his erection digging into my abdomen, and I knew I should be enjoying it, but...I couldn't breathe. The smell of smoke and blood was all around me and I couldn't breathe. I pushed against the arms holding me down, but he was too strong for me to move. I couldn't get away and I couldn't _breathe_.

Before I understood what was happening, Joel was gone, and I was gasping and shaking, sitting up on the side of the bed. The mattress creaked when he sat down next to me.

"S-s-s-sorry." I couldn't stop shaking.

Joel grabbed my hand and kissed it. "Don't apologize, Ellie. I should've realized. I wish to god I'd killed that fucking bastard before he ever touched you."

I looked at him in surprised dismay. "How did you know that's what—"

"You said his name." Joel's face was grim.

Well, fuck. It wasn't enough for David to haunt my nightmares, but he was going to give me a panic attack and ruin my first night with Joel? No. No fucking way. Fuck you, David. I clenched my hands into fists to stop them from shaking and leaned over to kiss Joel again.

He didn't kiss me back. "Ellie. I don't think—"

I kissed him as aggressively as I could, forcing my tongue into his mouth. This time he put his hands on my shoulders to hold me still. "Ellie! Cut it out. You don't have to—"

I lunged for his face again, but he had pressed his lips into a thin line. "God damn it, Joel," I said, beating my fist against his chest hard enough to hurt. "I need...I just need..." Tears were streaming down my face. "I need you to...I _need_ you, Joel. Please." I needed him to help me dispel David's memory, of being trapped by someone so much stronger than myself, but I couldn't form words coherent enough to ask.

Miraculously, Joel understood. His hand made long, slow strokes up and down my back until my breathing calmed, and then I felt his lips on my neck, so softly I wondered if I was imagining it at first. His tongue followed, tracing a path up to my jaw, and then he was kissing me again, dipping his tongue into my mouth like he was tasting me, his every movement calm and unhurried.

"Ellie," he pulled me up onto his lap and breathed into my ear, "we'll go as slow as you need to, and anything makes you uncomfortable, you just tell me and I'll stop, okay? You're in control here."

I looked down at his seamed face and felt like my heart would burst. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I nodded and kissed him again deeply, turning up the heat until I felt his erection bulging against my thigh again.

"You're wearing too many clothes," I panted, biting his earlobe. I stood and pulled him up with me, so I could run my hands down his long torso to the button on his jeans. This time he didn't stop me as I popped the button free and unzipped his fly as slowly as possible, teasing him as long as I could. I tugged his pants down, and he groaned as his cock sprang free from its confinement.

I sat back on my heels and stared. I'd seen plenty of porno magazines, and while Joel's equipment wasn't exactly on those dimensions, it was big enough that I was suddenly very worried about the biological mechanics involved in what was coming.

"Fuck, Joel," I said finally. "How does..."

Joel had been watching my face this whole time, and his eyes crinkled up at the corners with a smile. "Don't worry, sweet pea. I ain't never had any complaints." He raised me to my feet.

I swallowed my anxiety. I'd read that the first time might hurt, that I would bleed, but I was so turned on I didn't care. Somehow or other, I was going to get that monster inside me.

"Come here." Joel took my hand and pulled me toward him as he sat back down on the bed. He pulled me down until I was straddling him, my knees on either side of his thighs, and I could feel the whole hard burning length of him pressed up against me. I moaned as I rocked my hips against him and felt him slide across my slick flesh. Joel captured my lips again and looked into my eyes. He sounded a little out of breath as he said, "Remember, you are in control here. You understand?"

I nodded. "Oh, god..." He slid against me again, and I shook at the sensation. If I didn't feel him inside me soon, I was going to go crazy.

Raising myself up to get a better angle, I felt Joel's fingers parting the outer lips of my sex as I gripped him by the base and placed the tip of his cock at the boiling hot entrance of my cunt.

Joel held himself completely still, his muscles quivering with tension, as I pressed myself down on him. "Oh..." The tight ring of muscle at my entrance twitched and burned as the head of his cock slipped inside me. It hurt, but then Joel's thumb was rubbing my clit and everything relaxed enough for the pleasure to outweigh the pain. I bit my lip and slid down farther, expecting him to meet some resistance inside me, but there was nothing, nothing but the sensation of stretching and the wonderful growing sensation of fullness. I could feel his blood pulsing inside me. I slid further down, watching Joel's face the entire time as his shaft disappeared into me, until I felt my pelvis touch his. He closed his eyes and groaned when he felt himself bottom out in me.

"Ellie..."

"Oh, fuck. Joel." He kissed me, giving the twitching muscles of my cunt time to adjust, and then I gasped into his mouth because he was moving inside me, gently rocking his hips so that the hard shaft of his cock was sliding in and out, creating the most incredible sensation of wet friction and heat I'd ever felt. Each time my clit ground against his pelvic bone my pleasure built, and I moved my hips with him, throwing my head back in bliss.

"Ellie," he moaned. "Your pussy is so…" He thrust himself hard up against me. "Fucking…" Another hard thrust, deeper this time. "Tight…" This last thrust hit something tender and sensitive deep inside me, my cervix maybe, and I squealed in breathless pain. I raised my hips up so he couldn't go quite so deep and set a fast, shallow pace that let me grind my clit against him.

A sheen of sweat glistened on Joel's chest and my breath was coming in heaving gasps. The pleasure between my legs was building more and more as Joel fucked me at this pace. When he lowered his mouth to my nipple and suckled it while I rode him, it sent me right over the edge. "Ohhhhh, fucking...oh, my god! Joel!" I hollered while the muscles of my cunt spasmed around Joel's cock. I pushed myself down on him as deep as he would go.

My head was still spinning when I heard Joel say, "Ellie, baby, I can't...I need to stop or..."

I shook my head. "Don't stop...don't stop." I never wanted him to stop.

"Ellie, I don't..." I slammed my hips into his and he groaned.

And then he was thrusting up into me with all the strength in his powerful body, his head buried in my neck, his harsh breath hot against my skin. His fingers dug into the cheeks of my ass, pulling me down against him, and I raked my fingernails across the muscles of his shoulders. He was hitting my cervix again, but I didn't care. I could feel another orgasm building up inside me and I ground against him as hard as I could, sweat dripping from my chin. "Don't stop, don't fucking stop, Joel...I'm...I'm going to..." I moaned incoherently when my third orgasm of the night turned all my muscles to jelly.

The muscles of my cunt were still squeezing Joel's cock and my breath was still sobbing from my chest when I heard him utter a moan so deep and guttural that I felt it vibrating in my bones. He jacknifed his hips into mine and I felt his cock pulsing and twitching as it pumped his semen deep inside me.

We panted and clung to each other, our bodies slick with sweat. I rested my forehead against his. "Fuck me," I said finally.

Joel's body shook with laughter. "Just did, darlin'."

I snorted and climbed off of him as his softening cock slid out of me. We collapsed side by side on the bed. I felt utterly spent.

He rolled over onto his back and I laid my head on his shoulder, the same way we'd slept most nights for the past five years. It was somehow different when we were both naked.

Joel was tense and quiet, and I knew something was bothering him. I knew what it was, too.

I played with his chest hair. "I probably should have let you pull out, huh?" I said.

His arm tightened around me. "Probably." There was a tightness in his voice, too.

"Well," I said brightly, "Don't have to worry about it. I got my period a few days ago, so the timing's pretty good. For that sort of thing."

We lay there in silence, neither of us voicing what we were both thinking: Neither of us wanted me to get pregnant. We'd have to be more careful next time.

Wanting to lighten the mood, I laughed and said, "Holy shit, why didn't we do that years ago? Think of all the fucking we've missed out on!"

Joel's shoulders relaxed and he laughed and kissed my forehead. "Gimme some time to recover. I'll try and make up for lost time."

You know, for an old dude, it didn't take at all as long for him to recover as I thought it would.


	4. Fall (Part 1)

**Author's Note**

This chapter contains descriptions of graphic sex. If that kind of thing isn't your cup of tea, please skip it!

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**Fall (Part 1)**

"Joel?" I called as I came into the house. I propped my scoped hunting rifle up next to the door and rolled my tight shoulders. I was tired; it had been a long twelve-hour shift on the wall with fuck-all to show for it, but I knew just what would rejuvenate me. "Joel? I was really _naughty_ today..."

Spanking had become my favorite game, ever since Joel had made good on his original threat. I loved being bent over his knee, shaking with anticipation for the next stinging crack of his hand, the sudden shock of pain followed by the heat radiating from my abused skin. And I especially loved what he did afterwards, to take the pain away. I was already getting a little wet, just thinking about it. "Joel?" I called again. The house was quiet and felt empty, even though it was only three in the afternoon. I was starting to think that maybe Joel had been tapped for some carpentry work today after all when I heard raised voices coming from the back yard.

I slipped my shoes off and crept silently through the house to peek through the back window. Joel was there, his arms folded across his chest and a fierce glower on his face, yelling, "...any of their goddamned business, but you do know I'm not fucking my own daughter, right?"

"I know, Joel, I know." It was Tommy, his hands held out toward his brother in a placating gesture. "All I'm askin' is for you two to keep a lid on it in public for a while. Just until this fucking petition thing blows over. Maria backs you, hell, she practically pushed you two together, but she's got a whole town to think about, and it's growin' every day."

"And you? You back me, little brother?" Joel's voice held a challenge.

"Fuck, Joel." Tommy ran his hand through his hair in agitation. "I'm tryin' to. Maria would divorce me if I didn't. But..." he looked miserable. "But I look at Ellie and all I can see is that tough little kid you tried to dump on me six years ago. I look at her and I see Sarah."

Joel's fist hit Tommy's eye before I could even blink. "Oh, shit." I wrenched open the back door and pushed myself between the grappling brothers. "Joel, Joel, stop it! Stop!"

They backed away from each other, Joel snorting through his nose like a bull. Tommy touched his eye gingerly with one finger. He was going to have a hell of a shiner in a few hours. "Fuck, Joel. That fucking hurt."

Joel pushed angrily toward his brother again, but I shoved him back and said, "You. Stay here and cool down." He looked down at me, and I could see the anger drain from his eyes, to be replaced by a weary and haunted desperation.

"Ellie..."

I kissed him. "I'll be back in a second." I turned around and leveled a hard stare at Tommy. "Come on inside and let me look at that eye."

Tommy followed me into the house without a word. It wasn't until we were in the kitchen and I was chipping ice from the big block in the freezer that he spoke. "Ellie, I'm sorry you heard that..."

I whirled on him, the icepick still in my hand. "No, you listen to me, Tommy. I wanted this. I wanted him. I'm not fucking fourteen years old, I'm a grown-ass woman and I can make my own decisions. And I am _not_ Sarah."

Tommy stared at me for a long moment, and then nodded. "Okay. I don't know what you see in that old asshole out there, but I'm on your side. Now, uh..." He looked down at my hand. "You wanna stop pointin' that thing at me?"

I looked down at the sharp icepick. "Oh, shit. Sorry, Tommy. I didn't mean to..."

He laughed. "It's okay. Kind of helped you make your point. You really do love him."

I wrapped ice chips in a dishtowel and handed it to him. "I really, really do." He winced as the cold touched his swelling eye. "Don't move, I'll be right back."

Joel was looking over the back fence, his shoulders screaming with tension and his face drawn into a deep frown.

"Hey," I said from the back door.

He was next to me in four long steps, and then my head was buried in his chest, the strong scent of his sun-warmed skin filling my nose. His arms were wrapped around me like steel bands, and I sighed in content. This was my safest place to be.

I kissed him, my tongue pushing past his lips to slide deep into his mouth, and his shoulders relaxed as he kissed me back. I was breathing a little heavily when I looked up at him again and said, "You want to tell me what that was all about?"

He groaned and buried his head in my shoulder. "No."

I poked his bicep. "Tell me. You know I'll get it out of you eventually."

He looked down at me and sighed. "I didn't wanna upset you."

"Well, I'm getting upset now, so fucking tell me." We'd lived in Jackson long enough for me to know the kind of vicious gossip that passed for entertainment for some people, and I thought I knew what was coming.

He looked down at his feet. "There are some folks in town who...they're not too happy about us. You and me."

I was prepared for this. "Fuck them, Joel. I don't give a fuck what other people think-"

"Ellie." The quiet pain in his voice shut me up immediately, and I felt a spike of fear run through me. He took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. "They, uh...some of them petitioned Maria and the town council. To turn us out."

"What?" Oh, this was so much worse than I could have imagined. I was stunned. "But...why?"

He turned away from me and started pacing, clenching his fists. "I don't know, Ellie. Fear, probably. It's a lot of the same ringleaders who wanted us out after they found out you were infected."

"But...but that was three years ago, Joel! Have I fucking bitten anyone since then? Has anyone in this shithole turned into a fucking…"

His arms were around me again. "No. I know, baby."

"They're just usin' this relationship between the two of you as a new excuse," came Tommy's voice from behind me. "Tryin' to make a case that you're disruptive to the community, on moral grounds." I could hear the sneer in Tommy's voice.

I turned around to face Tommy, leaning back into Joel's body. "Fucking moral grounds? Just because Joel is old as fuck?"

"Ellie…" Joel growled.

"No, Ellie. Because a lot of people in this town thought he was your father. And now you're…" Tommy waved his hand in the air, at a loss for words "...all loved up, and it's askin' a lot of some people to just change that perception overnight. Maria should've fucking known better than to encourage you," he muttered.

I was starting to think that Maria was the only real friend I had here. "I don't understand. Why can't we just tell everyone that Joel's not actually related to me?"

Tommy shot a glance at Joel over my shoulder. Joel's arm tightened around my waist. "Uh, yeah. Maria's on that already. But, uh, you should know there are still a few people who're saying...you're lyin' about it."

"Jesus." Joel's chin was resting on my head, and I felt like his arms around my waist were the only things holding me up. I didn't want to leave Jackson. I liked it here, even if I sometimes felt I didn't really fit in anywhere except with Joel. I liked my house, and my job on the wall. The thought of starting over again outside, without the resources and companionship we'd found here, made me feel sick.

"Don't worry about it, Ellie, all right?" Tommy said. "There ain't too many people involved so far, and you got a lot of people in your camp already, okay? People will get used to it eventually, and this will all blow over. But it would help if y'all would maybe lay low for a while. Try not to be so public about it." He was smiling faintly.

"Okay." My voice was subdued, and Joel squeezed my waist again. "Tell Maria I'm sorry for all the trouble." I felt miserable.

"Maria will be fine. She's a tough nut." Tommy handed me the wet dishcloth; most of the ice had melted. "Thanks for this. My brother still hits like a fucking freight train."

After Tommy left, I went into the kitchen and threw the dishtowel into the sink. Joel trailed after me, not saying a word. I was blindingly, unspeakably, angry. I think if I'd known in that moment exactly who had signed that fucking petition, I might have gone out and killed them all. Turn us out...they might as well have been asking for a death sentence. And why? We weren't hurting anyone.

When I felt Joel's hand on my shoulder, I turned around and kissed him savagely. I poured all my anger into him, and he transformed it into something else, like he was a crucible. I bit down on the warm skin of his neck, filling my mouth with the taste of him, salt and sun, and something that was only him. The kitchen counter was a sharp bar of pain across the small of my back as he pressed into me, until I felt his hands at my waist, lifting me up to sit on top of it. My hands tore at the button of his jeans and his were at my waist, lifting my hips to draw my pants down my legs. Somehow I managed to push his pants and boxers down over his hips. I felt him parting the lips of my sex with his fingers, shuddering when he felt my wetness, and then he was inside me with one quick thrust. I wrapped my legs around his waist and dug my heels into the hard muscles of his ass, pulling him into me as deeply as I could. We didn't speak, just writhed and grunted against each other, our heads buried in each other's shoulders, pouring all our anger and pain into our coupling. When I came, it was like a dam breaking inside me, and I started to cry into his shoulder. Joel thrust a few more times deep inside me, and then he was gone, finishing himself with his hand. I felt the hot ropes of semen hit my thigh a few seconds later, but I was crying too hard to open my eyes.

It was the first time since we'd started fucking that sex with Joel didn't make me feel better.

"Ellie, baby girl, hush now. It's gonna be okay…" I could hear the pain in his voice, but I couldn't stop crying. I stuffed the heel of my hand in my mouth to hold back a sob.

He stood still for a long moment, and then I heard him moving, reaching around me to get to the sink. An icy, wet cloth touched my face, soothing against my hot skin as he wiped away the snot and tears. I opened my eyes, my breath still hitching in my chest, but cried out for the most part. "Sorry," I whispered.

"No, Ellie, I'm fucking sorry." He frowned as he swabbed his come off my thigh with the wet towel. "I thought we could just ignore it and it would eventually go away, but it looks like we're gonna have to face it someday soon."

"It's not any of their business."

He sighed. "In a town this small, everybody's business is everybody else's business."

"Joel," I felt tears in my eyes again. Damn it. I pushed my knuckles angrily against my eyelids to wipe the tears away. "What do we do if we have to leave? Where do we go?"

A memory of Joel on the first day I met him, angrily pointing outside the Q.Z. and saying "Do I have to remind you what is out there?" flashed through my mind. I shivered.

"Sweetheart, it ain't gonna come to that. I swear."

That didn't make me feel better either. I just wanted to hop off the counter and go to bed. "I want to go to bed, Joel. Move." He was still standing between my open thighs, his pants down around his knees.

Instead of moving, he put his arms around me and lifted me up off the counter, sliding one arm under my legs and supporting my back with the other.

"Hey, what are you doing?" I was so surprised I laughed, which was what he'd been hoping for.

"I'm puttin' you to bed." He had a half smile on his face.

"Yeah?" I raised my eyebrow. "And how do you expect to do that with your pants down around your ankles?"

"Sheer talent."

I threw my arms around his neck and giggled as he used his feet to step out of his jeans. "Now that's just cheating."

"Endure and survive." He kissed me on the nose.

And then I shrieked as he broke into a jolting run, bounding up the stairs and bouncing me in his arms. "Oh, my god, Joel, stop! Don't drop me!" I was howling with laughter by the time he made it the bedroom and dropped me on the bed. I looked up at him standing over me, naked from the waist down, except for his socks. I laughed again. "Oh, baby. That is a really sexy look on you."

He looked down at himself. "You like this? Is it the socks? It's the socks, right?" He posed for me with one foot on the bed, his junk dangling down against his thigh.

I dissolved into laughter. "Oh, yeah. Definitely the socks." I sat up and drew my shirt off over my head and held my hand out to him. "Come here. You got me all hot and bothered."

Joel's cock sprang to half-mast again and he unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the floor. But when he sat down on the bed and started to take his socks off, I stopped him. "Oh no, lover. Leave the socks."

We were both laughing as he pounced on me, covering my neck and chest with big open-mouthed bites while growling exaggeratedly. I shrieked with laughter as his beard tickled my ribs and he placed big, sloppy kisses all over my torso.

"Oh, god, Joel, stop it! My stomach hurts" I was laughing so hard I was wheezing. He climbed up my shaking body with kisses, and that's when I realized that he was laying on top of me, and his hard cock was pressing right up against the wet entrance of my cunt.

Joel realized it a split second after I did, and he went to push himself off me immediately. I grabbed his shoulder. "No. It's okay."

We'd been sleeping together for a few months now, but I'd never let him fuck me in this position. I would be on top, or he would enter me from behind, or any number of other combinations, but this, feeling his weight pressing down on me from above, always brought memories of David, if not full-blown panic attacks.

The look on his face was a wonderful combination of fading laughter and concern. It made my heart feel like it was going to explode. "You sure?"

I kissed his nose, and then kissed his mouth, letting my tongue slide over his until I could feel him panting. "Trust me. It must be the socks."

He laughed into my mouth and held himself up above me with his arms, and I opened my thighs for him. I moaned his name when he slid into me, and he stopped, just letting me feel the lengths of our bodies pressed against each other, and his hardness pulsing inside me with his heartbeat. "Want me to stop?" he said.

"I will murder the fuck out of you, if you do," I said.

He laughed again, and I could feel the way the muscles in his stomach and abdomen worked when he did it. Then he started moving his hips and all I could concentrate on was the way he felt as he moved in and out of my slick cunt.

I rolled my hips with him, grinding my pelvis into his. Oh, fuck, it felt good. Once he was sure I wasn't going to freak out, Joel started fucking me faster, and I reached down and held on to the hard muscles in his ass for dear life. My legs came up and wrapped around his waist as I moaned, "Harder, Joel."

Joel slammed his hips into me as I whimpered and moaned his name. When I came, I thought my orgasm would shatter me. I was crying and laughing at the same time.

Joel slowed down but kept moving inside me, and covered my face with kisses. "Ellie. Ellie." He kept saying my name, like a prayer. His breathing was getting heavier, and I knew he was getting close.

"Joel," I whispered in his ear, "I want you to finish in my mouth. I want to taste you."

His eyes blazed with lust. "Oh, god," he moaned. He thrust his cock a few more times inside me, and then he was kneeling by my head, stroking himself with one hand. I turned over and took him in my mouth, just as the first spurt of salty come burst from his tip. I grabbed his ass to hold him steady as he ejaculated down my throat and I sucked every drop from him.

He collapsed on the bed next to me. "Fuck." He smiled and kissed me. "I fucking love that dirty little mouth of yours." A line of concern creased his forehead. "You all right?"

He was talking about David. "I'm good." I looked down at his feet. "Those socks must be magic." But I knew it was the laughter, and time, and Joel that had made it okay again. David was a distant memory.

I put my head on his shoulder and took a deep breath. He smelled like sex, and me, and it made me smile. Whatever happened with the town, we had each other. "We're going to be all right."

He held me. "Yes, we are."

* * *

I woke up before dawn the next day. The worst thing about these twelve-hour duty shifts Maria had us on was they totally fucked with my sleep schedule. I had taken the 3-to-3 shift yesterday, today I'd be on 10-to-10, which was a little easier to deal with.

Joel's time these days was split between wall duty and carpentry and construction work; there were always more buildings that needed fixing up, and Joel ran a part-time crew of five guys who did everything from fixing broken fences to building whole barns from scratch. Everybody in Jackson was assigned a primary job based on his or her skills and experience, and the entire community helped out on the farms during planting and harvest seasons. In return for our labor, we got as many meals as we wanted to eat at the commissary, and we could supplement our food supply by hunting, gardening, gathering, and trading as much as we had time for.

Given my experience, my primary job was protection, and most days found me posted in the lookout tower on the eastern perimeter, opposite the main gate to the city. I liked it. It was usually quiet over there, with just me and one or two other people. The best nights were when Joel and I were both posted on east lookout together, because he'd tell me stories about growing up in Texas, or about smuggling runs with Tess, or, if I was particularly lucky, about Sarah. I learned what he wouldn't talk about, too. His father. His ex-wife. What he did after he left Texas and before he got to Boston.

Joel stirred and threw his arm over me. He pressed his face into my shoulder, tickling my skin with his beard. "Time is it?"

"Early." I kissed his head. "Go back to sleep."

"You go back to to sleep," he muttered.

"Okay." I couldn't. I was too wired. I stroked Joel's hair until he slipped back into sleep, drawing comfort from the warm, heavy weight of him on my shoulder.

We'd had a major skirmish with a group of bandits a couple weeks back, the first really big incident in years. These guys hadn't been just some random band of starving survivors, they'd been organized, and they'd come loaded for bear. We'd managed to send them packing without losing any of our people, but something about the attack didn't sit right with Maria. She said they'd just been testing our defenses, and she was afraid they'd hit us again soon, and harder this time. That's why all the regulars on wall duty had been pulling twelve-hour shifts, and our ranks were being supplemented in four-hour shifts by anybody else who could handle a gun.

One thing about guard duty is that it can be incredibly boring if nobody's attacking you, and you only need one or two sets of eyes on the ground at any one time. My nice, quiet nights on the east tower had lately been all-night poker games, playing for rounds of .22 ammo or trade goods. I sucked at poker, so I volunteered to be lookout more often than not. Joel, on the other hand, tended to clean up so much that people stopped wanting to play with him, so when he was on duty with me he'd join me in the lookout window and we'd keep one eye on the darkness and another on the game, offering our commentary.

A week or so ago, when we were sitting together in the shadowed window, Joel had pulled my feet into his lap, slipped my boots off, and started massaging me. I was in heaven until someone said, "Oh, just get a room already, you two."

There was a chorus of snickers from the card table. I tensed up. We hadn't gone around announcing the change in our relationship, but we hadn't exactly been trying to keep it a secret, either. I shot a glance to where Barry, a big blond guy I was regularly paired with on duty shifts, sat grinning his head off, and relaxed. I flipped him off with a smile. "Fuck off, Barry."

"Man, Joel, I don't know how you stand it. Her feet stink." There was another round of laughter from the card table.

"Fuck off, Barry," Joel said, with a smile

It was the same kind of good-natured ribbing that everyone here was subjected to when they were in a new relationship, and it had made me feel warm and happy inside. Accepted. The men and women who were regulars on the wall with me...I'd trust them with my life. We didn't hang out, but I liked and respected them all. Except maybe Sanjay now, but we hadn't pulled a duty shift together since the midsummer festival, and I was pretty sure that wasn't a coincidence. I might've threatened to twist his balls off and feed them to him the next time I saw him, and that kind of thing tends to leave an impression.

So who the fuck in this town would want to get rid of me and Joel, just because we were "all loved up," as Tommy had so colloquially put it?

_Christina_, I thought, and then immediately felt ashamed. Just because I'd been jealous of her didn't mean she was a vindictive bitch. If I was honest with myself, Christina was actually pretty cool, and she made the best cookies in town. I wished I could bake like that woman. I felt bad for being such a bitch to her. True, she did have a hangup about skin color, but she didn't really _hate_ anybody because of it. She just said stupid shit sometimes, and it made her look kind of dumb and backwards, but I knew it was just a remnant of however she'd been brought up. The woman didn't have a mean bone in her body.

_Pete and his buddies?_ Maybe. Although, as mean-spirited as that pool had been, it was a long way to go between ostracizing someone socially and putting them outside to die. Pete was kind of an asshole, but he wasn't that kind of asshole, and he'd been pretty respectful to me since I'd broken his fucking nose.

That left Doug Curtain and his gang of nutjobs. There were five or six of them, members of the Congregation of the Blood of the Lamb, and they had been the ones who'd been dead set against Joel and me coming back to Jackson after the infection scare. Maria had overruled them, with Doc's help, but they had been trying to make trouble for her and undermine her here ever since.  
I sighed in frustration. I was restless, but I didn't want to wake Joel up. All these small-town politics were making my head hurt, and I just wanted to get away for a day. Light was spilling around the edges of the curtains when I finally poked Joel's shoulder. "Hey, are you awake yet?"

He groaned into my shoulder. "No."

I tried to wiggle out from under him, but he threw one leg over me and clamped his arms around me. "Not lettin' you go," he said, his eyes still closed. He moved his mouth down to nuzzle my nipple and then took me in his mouth.

"Mmmmm." I held his head to my breast and ran my fingers through his soft hair, dark brown shot through with silver.

I arched my back when he moved to the other nipple, feeling his morning erection hard against my thigh, and I pulled on his shoulder to roll him over on top of me. He made love to me slowly, his face buried in my neck, and every time I got frustrated with the pace and told him to speed up he just kissed me, the long, deep movements of his tongue in my mouth a delicious counterpoint to what he was doing with his cock. I wasn't in control of anything that was happening, but Joel was so gentle and nondemanding that I was able to just surrender to it and let him lead me where he wanted me to go. It was agony and bliss. When I finally came, it wasn't like a thunderclap but like waves that rolled over and over me, and I thought it would never stop.

"Mmm. I like sleepy sex." I kissed his neck. "I think I came for, like, three years." Joel's body covered me like a blanket. A hard, fuzzy blanket.

He rolled off and lay next to me, scratching his chest and yawning. "It's a good way to start the day."

"Don't you want to..." He hadn't come yet. I looked over at him, but his erection was already flagging.

Joel laughed, and said, "Ellie, I ain't seventeen. You wore me out yesterday. Besides, I'm so hungry my stomach thinks my throat's been cut."

My stomach rumbled at the thought of breakfast.

He laughed and kissed my belly. "C'mon. Throw some clothes on and lets see what we can rustle up."

Breakfast was eggs, scrambled with wild mushrooms and the last of the hard cheese from the dairy, and thick slabs of the fresh bread I'd traded for, warmed in the oven and dripping with butter.

I swallowed an enormous bite of buttered bread and said, "I was thinking...let's get out of here today. Go hunting, or fishing, or something." I didn't feel like facing people. "I'll get Maria to get somebody else to cover my shift."

Joel's eyes lit up. It had been a while since we'd had time to get out of town and hike around the woods, just the two of us. "We're supposed to be working on the new house for the Mendosas, but today will be mostly electrical work. Max can handle that."

I tamped down the flare of jealousy that I always felt when Joel mentioned Maxine, the lone woman on his construction crew. Truth be told, I was jealous of any woman who got to spend time with Joel when I wasn't there. But Joel and Max were friends, and he liked and respected her, and sometimes it fucking killed me to think of them building stuff and getting all sweaty together. "Good, it's a plan," I said.

Joel had finished his eggs and now gave me a knowing grin. "Y'know, you get this cute little line in your forehead when you're jealous."

Damn it. This was why I was such a shitty poker player. I had a million tells, and Joel could read my face like a book. He knew what I was thinking even before I did. I loved it, but sometimes it was annoying as fuck.


	5. Fall (Part 2)

**Fall (Part 2)**

"I don't like the idea," Maria said.

Joel and I were sitting in her living room, sipping hot chicory coffee. I made a face; I'd never tasted real coffee, but this stuff was bitter as fuck, even with all the sugar and milk I'd dumped into it. Joel was drinking his black with every evidence of enjoyment. I took another sip and grimaced again. At least it was hot.

"We still don't know where those fucking bandits are, and we've already got a hunting party out there that should have come home yesterday," she continued. Her face was set, and I could see the strain around her eyes, so I didn't make a big deal out of being left out of the hunting party this time around. I was usually included when she sent out a group to hunt elk or mule deer for the community freezer, but with everything that had been going on, she must have decided to keep me home instead.

I dumped a couple more spoons of sugar into my mug and stirred. Thank god for sugar. Even though I hated working the sugar beet field in the summertime—the little fuckers had to be densely planted and then thinned out by hand two or three times, just for weed control—it was totally worth it to have sugar in my life.

"Look, Maria," I said, "I feel like we're causing trouble for you here. Just let us get out of town for a couple of days, so we're not in people's faces, maybe that will help. Joel and I know how to take care of ourselves."

Maria's voice was reluctant, but there was also a look of guilty relief in her eyes. "All right. I know you can take care of yourselves, but be careful out there. Use bows if you can, keep gunfire to a minimum; you don't want to attract unwanted attention, and we can't spare the ammo. And come back in two days. I can't spare either of you any longer than that. Tommy's on the gate, you can tell him I said to let you out. And guys," she stood up, and folded her arms over her chest, "for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I had no idea Doug and his congregation would try to pull this shit."

So it was Doug. What an asshole.

"Doug's an asshole," Joel said, setting his mug down on the table. Sometimes it was like we shared a brain, or something.

"Yeah, well, he's managed to get a couple of his friends into the town council, and they just fucking fight me over everything." Maria grimaced. "It's exhausting."

"You need to put a stop to that shit, Maria." Joel's hands were curled into fists, and I could tell he was angry.

"What do you want me to do, Joel? Outlaw their church? Arrange a convenient disappearance? I'm not a goddamned dictator. I'm in charge here because there's a general consensus that people want me to be. That may not always be the case, especially if I start telling people what they're allowed to believe."

Maria looked so upset that I said, "Of course people want you to be in charge here, Maria. Everybody's happy with that."

She frowned at me. "Ellie, I love you, but you don't have any idea what the fuck you're talking about. It is _impossible_ to make everyone happy. If I tried, I'd tear myself apart. And if enough people decide they don't like the decisions I'm making, I'm out of a job."

"But..."

"She's right, Ellie," Joel said. He looked at Maria, his eyes hard and intent. "You need _anything_ from me, anything at all, just tell me." I didn't like the way he emphasized that word. I glanced at him in surprise, but his face was just as inscrutable as the first day I'd met him.

Maria's eyes narrowed. "It's not that I don't appreciate it Joel, but that's not how I like to run things."

He shrugged. "The offer still stands."

Maria looked more pissed off than pleased. "Just get out of here, you two. I'll see you in a couple of days."

I couldn't believe what I thought I'd just heard him say. As we walked to the stables, our packs on our backs, I said, "What the fuck was that all about? Did you really just offer to bump off Maria's enemies?"

Joel's jaw clenched, and he didn't answer me.

Great. This was going to be a really fun trip.

At the stable, we argued over whether to take one or two horses, and which ones to take. When we got to the gate, Joel sat on his horse, glowering, and let me do all the talking, and he didn't apologize to Tommy, whose black eye was shaping up to be one for the history books. Outside the gate, we argued about which trail to take. I wanted to take the longer way, up the north side of the mountain, which would take longer but be easier going on us and the horses, and Joel wanted to take the trail up the south side, which was shorter, but much steeper and rougher going. He ended that argument by simply riding off in the direction he'd chosen, leaving me to either follow him or go my own way. After that we rode single-file in sullen silence until I couldn't stand looking at his fucking back any more.

I was on Blondie, a pretty little palomino mare, and Joel was riding a big brown gelding by the name of Boy George. The stablemaster, Burt, was an old timer, older than Joel even, who apparently still had a hardon for 80's music; I usually rode Def Leppard, but she was out with the hunting party. The trail was wide enough here for me to ride next to him, so I moved up until we were side by side. Joel was looking fixedly ahead, ignoring my existence.

"Are you going to talk to me, or just fucking glare the entire time?" His shitty mood was wearing off on me.

He didn't answer me, or even flick an eyelid my way. I tried again. "You can't go around offering to fucking kill people, Joel. This isn't Boston, or wherever the fuck you were before that. There are lines you can't cross here in Jackson."

He didn't look at me for even a second. "Ellie, I don't want to talk about it."

I reined in my horse. "You know what? No. Fuck you, Joel. You always do this, and I'm sick of it."

He stopped too, and finally looked at me, his eyes blazing with anger. "What? What the fuck do I always do?"

"You fucking close yourself off, Joel! You shut down on me, and you won't fucking tell me what's going on in your fucking head! I can't read your goddamned mind, you know."

"Don't push me, Ellie."

I ignored the warning in Joel's voice. "No. I came out here so we could spend some time together, but I don't even want to look at your face right now." I turned Blondie around and started back down the trail. If I hurried, I could still make it back in time for my shift on the wall.

"Ellie! Wait just a goddamned minute!" I heard him riding up behind me, and I slowed back down to a walk.

Joel pulled ahead of me and blocked the trail, turning the force of his anger on me. "You want to know what I'm feeling? I feel fucking _old_, Ellie. My back hurts, and my fucking knees hurt. I'm not as fast as I used to be, and I'm not as good as I used to be, and I sure as hell can't fuck like I used to. I had a daughter a million years ago, and I loved her, but I never...I _never_ would have touched her the way I—" His voice broke. He swallowed, and I was shocked to see that his eyes were bright with tears. Joel never cried. He continued, his voice low. "I have lived on this shitty planet for almost three times longer than you have, and I love you so much that the thought of losing you or you getting hurt makes me want to fucking die. I would kill everyone in that fucking town to protect you."

Holy shit, was I sorry I'd opened this can of worms. I didn't have clue one what to say to that. I guessed saying "You're not old, you're well-seasoned" was not going to help this time around; now was not the time for a wisecrack. As declarations of love went, it was the most terrifying one I'd ever heard, and I couldn't do anything but stare at him wide-eyed.

Joel's face sagged into haggard lines and he looked every day of his fifty-four years. "And that's why I don't tell you how I'm feeling." I had never heard him sound so bitter.

"I...Joel, I..." I stopped again. Between the two of us, Joel was usually the one who did calm and soothing, and the sudden role reversal was freaking me out a little. _Get it together,_ I told myself. _He needs you._ I took a deep breath and said, "Joel, of course you never would have touched Sarah the way you touch me." I could tell by the way his face crumpled that I'd picked the right thing to respond to first. I realized that Doug's accusations had not only endangered our peaceful lives, but they had hurt Joel, and deeply, because by extension they maligned Joel's relationship with Sarah. Doug had smeared mud on the one thing that Joel had managed to keep sacrosanct all these years, through everything he'd lived through and done. How could I make that better? I wanted to hold him, but we were still sitting on the stupid horses, so instead I reached out and took his hand.

"Sarah was your daughter. The way you felt about her...don't tell me you ever felt that way about me, because I know you'd be lying." He opened his mouth, but I held up my hand to stop him. "I know there's a little bit of that dynamic between us. Older guy, younger girl, it's bound to happen, and when we came back to Jackson, a lot of people just assumed you were my father, because of our age difference. But even back then, back before anything romantic started between us, we were partners, right? We watched each other's backs. We protected each other because we were friends. More than friends. By the end of that trip, you were the only person I cared about in the world, but I never, _never_ thought of you as my dad, Joel."

"Ellie..." The fierce need in his eyes made my chest ache.

"Did you ever think of me as your daughter?" I wasn't sure if I should ask this question, but I did anyway.

His brows drew together in a deep frown. "You bring out that same protective streak in me," he said finally.

"Jesus, Joel, give yourself a break. That's how people feel about the people they love. Did you ever once look at me and think, hey, I'm going to adopt this girl and raise her as my own, because she could be like Sarah's little sister?"

His eyebrows were still frowning, but more in thought than in distress. "No..." He smiled at the realization, despite himself. "No. Definitely not."

"So do you think you could maybe stop beating yourself up about wanting to bone me?" I squeezed his hand.

He laughed, the lines of tension in his shoulders finally relaxing. "Ellie. You are somethin' else, darlin'." He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. "I love you."

"Duh." I smiled back at him. I could barely contain the happy relief I felt. I'd done okay with the heavy stuff. Time for a wisecrack. "And what you said before, about not being able to fuck like you used to...it's probably a good thing I didn't meet you when you were younger, because you would have broken me."

One thing I really wished we had from before the pandemic was those digital cameras. Joel had showed me one once; he'd found it in a house and carried it around for weeks before he found a working battery. When he finally turned it on, it was full of pictures of a family—Mom, Dad, and two little boys—posing on white sand beaches at some tropical resort, looking tan and happy. I wished like hell I had a working camera right now to capture the smile that lit up Joel's entire face, because I wanted to remember him looking like that forever.

* * *

"Well, shit."

Joel was standing with his hands on his hips at the edge of the path, looking across the twelve-foot gap to the other side. "The trail's washed away. Must've been all that rain we had last month." There was a narrow remnant of the path clinging to the mountainside, maybe eighteen inches at its widest. It looked like it might crumble at the slightest touch, and there was no fucking way I was going to try and cross it. The drop down the mountain was over thirty feet.

I couldn't help myself. "I told you we should have taken the long way around. It's not as steep."

Joel shot a sour look my way. "Not helpful, Ellie." He sighed. "Fuck. We'll never make it to the cabin this way, not with the horses, and we'll lose a whole day if we go back around. By that time it'll be time to head back home."

We were headed to an old forestry service cabin that the community kept stocked with spare supplies for hunting trips. It was a good place to crash, and it was up the mountainside high enough that there should be plenty of game around this time of year, especially big stuff like elk and black bear.

"Way I see it, we've only got one option: we leave the horses here and go on up on foot," he finally said.

He was out of his mind. "Nuh uh. No way am I crossing that. I don't have a death wish. Let's camp here and just see what we can find."

"It ain't that bad, Ellie." He stepped out onto the narrow ledge of rock. "Feels pretty sturdy. And we didn't bring any camping gear with us, so it's gonna get pretty cold sleeping rough. And we sure as hell ain't gonna find any elk around here."

He was right, it was too early in the season for the elk to have made their way down from the higher elevations. I was wavering, but I said, "Even if I did cross that ledge, which I'm not, and we did get an elk, which we might not, how the hell would we get it back to town without the horses?"

Joel's smile was triumphant. "I reckon that old four-wheeler up at the cabin is still workin'. We can take our elk back to town the long way, and then come back up for the horses on the south trail."

After we tied the horses up, I found myself inching out along the narrow ledge across the gap. It was about a foot wide here, but I could see that it pared down to maybe six inches wide for the last few feet. I stopped moving and turned my head back to Joel. "I just want you to know that I'm doing this under protest and against my better fucking judgement." We'd decided it would be better if I went first, because I weighed so much less than he did.

He looked more anxious than was really good for my confidence. "It'll be fine, Ellie. Just be careful and test every step before you put your full weight on it."

"If I die in the next five minutes, I'm blaming you," I grumbled under my breath. I moved my foot forward cautiously, hugging the steep rock face beside me. _Don't fucking look down, Ellie._ I did, and was immediately sorry. The weakened part of the ledge had sheared off and dropped straight down the mountainside. I could see treetops below me. I stopped moving completely and just leaned against the mountain for a second, digging my hands into cracks in the rock and hoping the vertigo would pass.

"How you doing, baby?" I could hear the edge of anxiety in his voice.

"Fine, just fucking fine, Joel. I'm just working on my tan here." I focused my eyes on the rocks in front of me and didn't even think about looking down again. I inched my way along the ledge again, feeling carefully for each step. After what felt like a month, I looked up to see the far side was only a few feet away, and I was coming to the really narrow section of the ledge. Taking a deep breath, I slid my foot out onto the six-inch shelf. It was solid. I breathed a sigh of relief and took another step. And another. So far so good.

I was maybe two feet away from the far side when the weakened rock under my feet gave a sickening, sliding lurch, and in desperation I pushed off with my back foot and leapt to the trail on the other side of the gap, skinning my palms and my knees when I landed.

"Ellie! Shit, shit, shit! Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not fucking all right!" My voice was high with panic, and my heart was pounding so hard I could feel my chest moving.

"I'm comin' over there…"

I turned around to see him step out onto the first part of the ledge, and said, "No! You idiot! Stay where you are!" I could see that my passage had caused a four-foot section of the ledge to fall down the mountain, leaving only a sheer rock face. Joel might have been able to jump the gap, but who knows if the edges would hold long enough for him to do it.

"I told you this was a bad fucking idea." I hugged my knees to my chest, hoping it would stop me from shaking so bad.

Joel was swearing up a storm and looking through his pack. "Baby, you bring any rope with you?" he called.

"No, I didn't bring any fucking rope, Joel!" I was pissed off beyond all reason. I never should have let him talk me into this.

"Okay, Ellie, listen to me." Joel had slipped into survivor mode, his voice calm but urgent. It was weird how quickly the change happened, like he was putting on a familiar jacket. "The forestry cabin should have some rope. You get up there and grab it, and come back down here. I can get you back across, but we need some rope."

I was still feeling panicked. "Tell me exactly how rope is going to help in this situation, Joel?"

"Just trust me."

Fucking great. That meant he had no idea, and he was just going to make it up as he went along. But at least it was some form of plan. I stood up and looked up the path, which wound around the mountain and out of sight into the trees. I knew that the cabin was a good five miles from here, and the elevation change was maybe four thousand feet. It was going to be a long, steep climb.

"Why don't I just take the four-wheeler back to town when I get to the cabin? You can turn back around now and lead Blondie back," I said.

"No." Joel's voice was flat. "We stick together. I wouldn't let you go up there alone unless I had no other choice. Besides," now he sounded sheepish. "I ain't exactly sure the four-wheeler's workin'."

My eyes narrowed. "You are such an ass."

"Love you, Ellie. Be careful. Now get."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Love you, too. Keep an eye out. If I get back here and find out you got eaten by clickers I'll be really annoyed."

Joel knew that my stupid jokes were just my way of trying to hide how freaked out I really was. He smiled wryly, and said, "Me too."

* * *

I trudged up the steep path through the forest, my muscles starting to scream in protest. I was in pretty decent shape, but this trail was brutally steep, and the ground was littered with rocks that just wanted to get underfoot and turn my ankles. By the time I came to the overlook that was the last landmark before the forestry cabin, my lungs were burning, I was dripping with sweat, and my legs were shaking. This was so much easier on a horse.

"I can't believe people actually used to do this for fun," I muttered to myself, taking a long drink from the plastic water bottle I'd packed. I'd left Joel over two hours ago, and I'd have to hurry if I wanted to get back to him before dark, so as soon as I caught my breath I pushed ahead, wishing my legs didn't feel so much like dead weights.

I hiked the last half mile in kind of a daze. My heels inside my shoes were wet and bloody from the blisters that had burst a couple miles back, and every step was agony. When I finally caught a glimpse of the weathered red side of the forestry cabin, I almost cried in relief.

I was so tired that I almost didn't notice that the cabin door was hanging open, but something in my subconscious alerted me and before I realized what I was doing, I was crouching down behind the bushes and listening for movement, the way Joel taught me, my bow in my hand and an arrow ready to nock.

There were three four-wheelers pulled up in front of the cabin. One was the shitty old red one we kept up there for emergencies, but the other two I didn't recognize. I heard voices inside, and while I crouched there trying to decide what to do, the door swung open and a man walked out onto the concrete porch.

_Oh, fuck,_ I said to myself. I had never seen him before._ I think I just found our bandits._

"Well, that was a really satisfying bit of information, thank you, Peter," he said over his shoulder to someone still inside the cabin. "It was quite a stroke of luck, my running into you." He was older than Joel, silver-haired and gaunt, and he had a weird accent, kind of like Marcus Brodie's in Indiana Jones, which probably meant he was English, maybe?

With a start, I realized he was wiping his hands on a towel because they were covered in blood. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach went from bad to worse. A second guy, thicker set and younger than the first, came out of the cabin carrying a box. Was that Peter? The box in his arms looked like it was packed with food and supplies. I flushed with anger. These dickheads were stealing the supplies from our cabin!

I could deal with these assholes. Not even daring to breathe, I nocked my arrow and drew back my bow as slowly and smoothly as I could. _Hey, English guy,_ I thought,_ let's see how you enjoy those supplies with an arrow through your fucking eye._

Almost like he had heard my thought, the tall man's eyes went right to me. I froze. There was no way he could have seen me, I was pretty well camouflaged, but it still felt like his ice-blue eyes were boring a hole right through my skin. After getting bitten by the infected and almost getting raped and murdered by cannibals, it was the scariest fucking thing I'd ever experienced. I didn't move a muscle.

It was just as well I didn't shoot him, because two more guys walked out of the cabin, carrying more boxes. Motherfuckers. As soon as the scary tall dude's eyes were off me, I released my draw to relieve my shaking muscles and breathed again. I'd better just wait until they cleared out; maybe they'd leave some rope, and I could get back to Joel.

The bandits were tying the boxes down to the two unfamiliar four-wheelers when a walkie on the leader's hip squawked. "Sir?"

He keyed the radio. "Go ahead."

"We picked up another townie over here on the south side. Fucker killed Ramirez and pushed Clayton off the goddamned mountain. But we got him tied up and ready for transport back to the camp. He had two horses with him, too."

My heart stopped beating. I crept forward so I could hear.

The man's eyes narrowed. "Did you see anyone else with him?"

"Nah, he swears he was alone. Preston cut him pretty bad, but he didn't change his story."

_Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck._ I had to remind myself to breathe. Maybe he wasn't talking about Joel. Maybe it was one of the hunting party.

"Now, Simons, I really hope Preston didn't damage our new friend too badly. You know I like to take care of interrogations myself." The man's face was as hard as cut marble. He motioned to the other three men to keep loading the four-wheelers.

"He's all right. Conscious, anyway. Preston stopped because—get this—the guy says he knows you. Described you pretty well, too."

The older man's face lit up with a fierce curiosity. "Now, that is interesting. Can you describe him to me?"

I held my breath again to hear the description. _Let it be someone else,_ I prayed. "Old-timer. Early fifties, maybe. Brown eyes, beard, maybe just under six foot tall."

The leader's icy blue eyes were burning with intensity. "Did he give you a name?"

"No, hold on a second. Hey, asswipe! You got a name?"

A new voice came through the walkie; the bandit on the other end must have kept his finger on the send button. "Go fuck yourself."

_Fuck._ I closed my eyes. It was Joel.

The leader's gaunt face broke into a smile that made my skin crawl. "Killer? Is that really you?"

He didn't answer. I heard a thud, and then Joel grunted in pain. "Michael. You used to run with guys who could hit worth a damn."

Oh god, this was bad. This was really bad.

Michael laughed, but the smile never reached those creepy blue eyes. "You were hard to replace, Killer. I can't tell you how pleased I am that we'll have a chance to catch up. Your little brother isn't with you, by any chance?"

There was another wet smacking noise, but Joel didn't talk again.

Michael grinned wolfishly and spoke into the walkie again. "Mister Preston, Mister Simons, search the area again. I want it done thoroughly. Gentlemen, we're heading back to the south side now and we'll see you and our guest back at camp. Take care he doesn't take a tumble down the mountain, he's an old friend of mine."

"Yes, sir. Should we...should we untie him, sir?"

"Oh, no." Michael's voice was soft. "That would be a particularly stupid thing to do. Out." He keyed the walkie off and hung it from his belt again.

In a daze, I watched them finish loading the four-wheelers and climb on, two to a vehicle. Before they left, one of the men said to Michael, "Sir, what about the horses?"

"Regretfully, we'll have to leave them. I need all of you at camp tonight to plan our final push. Perhaps we can send Mister Evans back tomorrow to collect them, assuming they aren't eaten by bears tonight." Then he leaned forward into the throttle and drove down the trail, heading back down the north side of the mountain, and his men followed him.

I hunkered down there, crouched behind the bushes, until I couldn't hear the whine of their engines any more, and then I sprang up from my hiding place, panic giving me back the energy that the hike had drained out of me. I could see from fifteen feet away why they'd left the red four-wheeler: the battery compartment was open and empty, and one of the tires was missing. The fuckers had stripped it for parts.

_Okay, that's all right. I can find the horses they were talking about. I can probably follow their four-wheeler tracks straight to their camp._ The calm, rational part of my mind told me that this was a very, very stupid idea. I had no idea how many bandits there were, but I counted at least six, from what I'd seen and heard. There were most probably more than that. What the fuck was I going to do against an entire bandit camp? Then I remembered the look on Michael's face when he recognized Joel's voice, and the calm, rational part of my mind went and hid under a rock somewhere.

I was heading around the back of the cabin to look for the horses when I heard a low moan from inside, and I froze in my tracks. I drew my revolver from the waistband of my jeans and checked the chamber. It was loaded. As slowly and silently as I could, I crept up to the open cabin door and pushed it open.

I saw Barry's body first. There was a neat hole directly in the center of his forehead, like a third eye. I'd lost an entire box of .22 ammo to him in a poker game just last week. Propped up against the wall next to him was Sandra Chan, whose father ran the dairy, and who at twelve had been the youngest townsperson to bring down a black bear by herself. She'd been a good hunter, and a better shot, and she was only sixteen years old. Her throat was cut from ear to ear.

I felt tears burning my eyes, and my heart was pounding. I'd found the missing hunting party, but the bandits had found them first.

Swallowing back the bile rising in my throat, I raised my gun and stepped through the door to check out the rest of the tiny cabin.

"Jesus Christ." I lowered my gun. The bandits had dragged a wooden table into the center of the room, and on it lay a man's body. He was lying on his back, and there was an arrow through his left shoulder, pinning him to the table like a bug.

He stirred feebly at the sound of my voice. "Who's there?" His lips were so split and bloody I could barely make out the words.

"Oh, fuck. Pete." Peter. That's who Michael had been talking to. I tucked my gun back into my waistband and ran over to the table. Pete was covered in so much blood I couldn't even tell where it was coming from, or if it was all his. His shirt was lying crumpled on the ground, and I picked it up and tried to start wiping the blood away.

Pete's hands groped for mine. "Ellie?" He looked like he was having trouble focusing on my face. Not a huge surprise, with an arrow pinning him to a table. Given the angle, almost straight up and down, someone would have had to stand on the table and shoot him from above. They'd done it deliberately to incapacitate him, and then they'd just left him here to die.

"Hey, Pete, buddy, give me a sec." My voice sounded faint. I barely made it outside before I lost my breakfast on the porch, and then I headed back in, spitting puke out of my mouth.

Pete laughed through clenched teeth. "It's pretty fucking bad, isn't it? I think...I think they killed Sandra."

"Yeah," I said.

"Oh, fuck. Fuck." Now that I'd mopped some of the blood away, I could see that he was bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts on his torso, made in precise, parallel lines with what was probably a very sharp knife. My stomach heaved again, but nothing was left to come up.

"Pete," I said, in what I hoped was a calm voice, "we need to get this arrow out of you, buddy. I'm going to try and pull it out, okay?"

"No! Don't! Hunting broadhead. Barbed. Can't pull it out that way."

Shit. "Okay, Pete. I'm going to have to break off the fletching and pull you up off of it. This is going to hurt. You ready?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. I wiped my palms on my jeans and grabbed hold of the arrow shaft in both hands, trying to ignore Pete's groan of pain as I jarred the shaft in his wound. I braced it with one hand, low down near his shoulder, and then I pressed on the fletching with my other hand as hard as I could. "Fucking arrow, fucking break!" I muttered. Pete was yelling his head off, but he passed out before the shaft finally snapped with a splintering crack.

I dropped the fletching from my shaking hands and squatted on the floor, suddenly feeling dizzy.

I took a deep breath and stood up again and checked Pete over. He was pale as a sheet, but his pulse was strong. It would have taken him a long time to die if I hadn't come along, unless a bear or an infected had wandered into the cabin and finished him off. Which, come to think of it, had maybe been the point of leaving him there all covered in blood, with the door wide open. I shuddered. I'd seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life, but nothing quite so calculated and cold as this.

The truncated arrow shaft stuck up from his shoulder. _What is it with me and guys impaled on stuff?_ I swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter. Oh, god, Joel. How much time had passed? That fucker Michael may already be doing something like this to Joel.

I slapped Pete on the face to wake him up, and he swam back into consciousness, his eyes unfocused and full of pain. "Pete. Look at me. I'm going to pull you off this arrow, all right?" I was trying to figure out how to do it. With him lying on the table like that, I didn't have the height or the leverage to lift him. I was going to have to climb up onto the table and stand over him.

"Ellie…" Pete coughed, and I wondered if he maybe had internal injuries I couldn't see. "You have to...get back to Jackson. Warn them."

No. I was going to get Joel first. "What do you mean? Warn them about what?"

"Attack. Tomorrow. They're…" Pete coughed again.

I tried not to be impatient with him, but Joel's time was running out. "Maria has the wall fortified. We're ready for them. They'll be fine."

"No! Not the town! The dam."

I remembered that Pete was an engineer at the dam. He fixed the turbines when they broke down and tried to keep the structure patched up as well as possible. As far as I knew, Maria was expecting an attack against the city and only had a skeleton crew at the dam.

"They made me...they made me tell them where to put it…" Pete was weeping. "They're going to blow the dam. Said they had lots of C4."

My blood ran cold. Blow up the dam? Without the dam, we had no electricity, and no electric fence to keep out the infected or bandits. Without the dam, we were basically in the dark ages, and it would only be a matter of time before we were all dead. Everything we'd built in Jackson, everything, our whole way of life, would be gone. "Holy shit," I whispered. "Why?"

"Get to Maria and tell her. Fucking leave me here. I'll slow you down."

"I'm not leaving you here, Pete." I ground my teeth in frustration. He was right, he would slow me down, but I couldn't just leave him out here to die. And Joel…the thought of him in Michael's hands made me feel so desperate I wanted to tear my own skin off. "Now come on."

I climbed onto the tabletop and stood over Pete, hooking my hands under his armpits. He grunted in pain as I jostled the shoulder pinned to the table, but nodded when I asked him if he was ready. With me lifting and him pushing against the table with his good arm, together we pulled him off the broken arrow shaft and into a sitting position. A gush of blood ran down his chest and he swayed.

"Stay with me, man. I'll kill you myself if you even think about passing out on me," I said.

Pete blinked at me. I think I might have scared him. Michael's fucking guys had taken every drop of alcohol from the cabin, so I sloshed some of the cooking brandy that I kept in a flask in my pack for emergencies over Pete's shoulder and wrapped his bloody shirt around it. It was the best I could do, but I think it helped stop the bleeding.

I put my arm around his shoulder and helped him out the door to the porch, where I leaned him up against the wall. "Ellie," Pete said, his face gray with pain, "Why are you helping me? You hate my guts."

The part of my mind that was screaming at me to go find Joel was asking the same question. _I got him off that table, now I can put him on a horse and send him down the mountain alone, and I can head back to look for Joel._ I looked at Pete. He was close to slipping out of consciousness again. There was no way the guy could ride down the mountain by himself. _You better fucking hang in there, Joel. I'll find you as soon as I can._ "Because I'm a human being, not a fucking monster, Pete," I finally said. I left him standing there so I could go look for the horses and tried not to think about what choice Joel would have made, if our positions were reversed.

* * *

**Author's Note**

Thank you everyone for the reads and reviews! Cover Me Up will continue soon with Fall (Part 3).


	6. Interlude (Fall, 2018)

**Author's Note**

The next part of the story is taking a little longer than usual to come together, so in the meantime, here's a short look at Joel's life as a hunter.

* * *

**Interlude (Fall, 2018)**

Tommy was just lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, when Joel came into the room they shared. "Hey, you did real good out there today." Tommy didn't say a word, just continued staring fixedly at the ceiling.

Joel threw a package of Oreos onto Tommy's bed. "Here. Snagged you these."

That got his attention. Tommy sat up and smiled, a look of disbelief on his face, and Joel realized with a pang that he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his little brother smile. He brushed it aside. It didn't matter, Tommy was still alive, and that was the important thing.

"Five-year-old Oreos. You think they're still any good?" Tommy held the package up and inspected it.

"Only one way to find out," Joel said.

Slowly, almost reverently, Tommy ripped the package open. "You reckon this is the last package of Oreos in the world?"

Joel shrugged.

Tommy fished two of the black and white cookies out of the package and handed one to Joel. Joel waited until Tommy popped his cookie into his mouth and smiled with obvious enjoyment before taking a bite of his own, and then he was immediately sorry he'd done it. The stale wafers with their greasy filling were sweet, too sweet, but the problem wasn't the taste, it was the voice in his head that said "Daddy, why don't you dunk your Oreos in milk? They're better that way."

_No._

Joel chewed the stale cookie into a paste and willed his face into a stonelike mask.

Tommy was still smiling. "Hey, you remember how we used to sit on the porch eatin' Oreos and drinkin' RC Cola? Man, what I wouldn't give for just one more RC Cola." He looked at Joel, oblivious to his brother's inner struggle. "Hey, how'd you rate a whole package of Oreos, anyway? We ain't seen anything like this in a couple years, at least. I thought Michael kept all the good stuff for himself."

"It's my birthday." Joel didn't know how Michael had found out it was his birthday, he sure as fuck had never mentioned it himself. Tommy must have flapped his mouth at some point.

Tommy's smile faded. "Oh. Shit, Joel. I wasn't keepin' track…"

Joel shrugged again.

Tommy held out the package of cookies to Joel. "Here, it's your birthday, you shouldn't let me eat all of these."

Joel shook his head. "It's all right. They don't taste like I remember." Sarah liked to unscrew the cookies and lick the filling off before she dunked the wafers in her glass of milk and ate them.

_No!_ Joel mentally slammed a wall up in front of the memory of Sarah.

"You okay, big brother?" Tommy was looking at him strangely.

Joel forced his clenched fists to relax. "Yeah, why?"

Before Tommy could respond, there was a knock on the door. It was O'Flynn, a big red-haired man who'd come to Philadelphia from the military-run quarantine zone in Boston. A mob enforcer before the cordyceps pandemic, he'd chafed under the military rule in Boston and finally sought his freedom in the crumbling remains of the country outside the QZ walls. He'd fallen in with Michael's crew a couple years back, around the same time as Joel and Tommy.

"Hey, Killer," O'Flynn said. Joel's eye twitched at the nickname. "He wants you."

_What now?_ Joel wondered, as he walked down the hallway. He'd thought Michael was done with him for the day.  
Michael smiled when he saw Joel. "Killer!" Michael thought it was hilarious that Joel's last name, Miller, rhymed with "killer," but Joel was sure the nickname had stuck with him simply because Michael somehow knew how much it got under his skin. "You did really, really fine work this afternoon. I couldn't have done better myself. We were able to find where they were hiding the rest of their supplies, and we turned up these two morsels. But you slipped out earlier before I could give you your other birthday present."

Michael crossed to the corner of the room that Joel had avoided looking at, where two women clung to each other.

_Fucking bastard_, Joel thought. Michael knew Joel wasn't interested in rape, unlike most of the rest of Michael's crew, but when the son of a bitch got in the mood to mindfuck you, he always knew which buttons to press. It was a little like he could read your mind with those scary fucking ice-blue eyes of his. Usually Joel managed to just absent himself in the aftermath of those occasions when they captured women alive. But tonight, Michael wanted to give him a present, and Joel wouldn't be able to say no. It was dangerous to refuse Michael's presents, because he saw it as a sign of weakness, and weakness, like women, had no place in Michael's organization.

Michael pushed one of the women into Joel's arms. "I thought you'd like this one."

Joel looked down at the woman crying in his arms. _No_, he corrected himself, _not a woman, a girl._ She had short blonde hair and was skinnier than a rail, and she couldn't be older than seventeen. Just the age Sarah would be if…"Michael," he said, over the ringing in his ears, "You know I don't like 'em this young."

"Oh, sorry, Killer. I'd forgotten." Michael smiled, and Joel could practically hear the man's precise brain clicking away as he filed Joel's reaction away for later.

_Bullshit_, Joel thought. _You just wanted to see me squirm._ Joel let himself feel a tiny sliver of relief that Michael wasn't in the mood to insist.

"You take the mother, then. I want you to have a good time on your birthday, so you take all the time you want with her. This one can go with O'Flynn first, because he brought in the most supplies this month." The weeping teenage girl was pulled out of Joel's arms, and for just a split second he had the crazy urge to hold on to her. He let her go. There was nothing he could do for the girl.

Joel held his hand out to the girl's mother, a still-pretty brunette in her late thirties or early forties. "Come on," he muttered. She followed him out the door, unresisting, her eyes far away.

When Joel brought the woman into their bedroom, Tommy gave him one hard look and left without saying a word to him. He sat her down on his bunk and leaned against the opposite wall.

She didn't look at him, but she said, "My husband is dead."

"Yes," Joel said.

She nodded. "Was it quick?"

Joel suppressed the memory of the sickening crunch the man's knee had made when Joel had driven his knife into it, just behind the kneecap. The interrogation had taken a long time. "Yes," he said again.

She closed her eyes. "Good."

Joel folded and unfolded his arms uncomfortably. "Are you hungry or…"

"Are you going to fuck me?" she asked.

"No," Joel said.

"You can, if you want. It doesn't matter," she said.

_Jesus fucking Christ._ The ache in Joel's chest wouldn't go away, and he realized he'd had enough of this shit. Surviving the outbreak wasn't worth it if it meant living like this. He found himself saying, "Where were you folks headed?"

She looked at him for the first time, her eyes wary with surprise. "Boston. I knew someone who could get us into the quarantine zone."

"You and your girl want some company?"

He'd never forget the terrible hope on her face.


	7. Fall (Part 3)

**Fall (Part 3)**

Riding a horse down a mountain while simultaneously trying to balance a half-conscious man who weighs twice as much as you do in front of you is not as easy as it sounds. Pete felt like he was going to topple off the horse at any second the entire way down the mountain, and I didn't dare go any faster than a trot. When we finally made it back to town, the sun had been down for a few hours already, and I was frantic to turn around and start back up the south side to look for Joel.

By the time Maria and Tommy met me at the stables, every muscle in my body was strung so tight with tension that I almost cried out in relief when I saw them. "Maria! Those fucking bandits are going to try and blow up the dam tomorrow, but you should talk to Pete, he knows more about it, but he's hurt pretty bad so I sent him on up to Doc already, and they captured Joel and I don't know what they're fucking doing to him so I only need like eight or ten guys and we can go get him out of there..." The words tumbled out of my mouth in one long run-on sentence, tangling themselves in my tongue.

"Ellie, stop. Stop!" Maria interrupted me. "Slow down, and tell me everything, from the beginning."

So I did, and Maria's every interruption and request to repeat myself was an agony. I was wasting too much time. I was watching Tommy when I described the bandits, and when I said Michael's name, all the blood drained from his face.

"Oh, shit. Oh, fuck," he said.

Maria looked at him sharply. "Michael? Not the same Michael you told me about? From Philadelphia?"

"He called Joel Killer," I said.

Tommy's face was gray. He looked like he was about to pass out.

"Fucking...fuck." He turned to Maria. "It's the same guy."

"What the fuck is he doing here in Wyoming?" Maria demanded.

"I don't fucking know, Maria! I haven't seen that sick fuck for twenty years. I was really hopin' he'd be dead by now." Tommy ran a shaking hand through his hair.

"Can he really blow up our dam?" Maria asked.

"Pete said something about C4," I said, trying to be helpful.

Tommy nodded. "He was ex-military. Fucking British special forces or something. If anyone could get their hands on shit like that and know how to use it, it would be him."

"Fuck." Maria pulled her walkie off her hip and keyed it. "Matt? Send Donovan and Goldberg over to my place for an emergency war council. I want Red Team and Green Team pulled off the wall immediately. Take them to the armory, load them up, and get the fuck over to the dam."

"Copy, Maria. What the fuck is going on?"

"Donovan will brief you when she catches up. Be careful and shoot anything that moves. Don't let anything near that power plant. And hurry the fuck up. Maria out." She keyed off the walkie and clipped it to her belt again.

"Maria," I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, "What about my team? I need ten guys, but I could probably do it with five, but ten would be better, because I don't know how many of those fuckheads are up there..."

"Ellie." The genuine pain in Maria's voice brought me up short, and I sucked in my breath, the terrible, sure knowledge of what she was going to say next a lump of lead in my stomach. "You know what's going down tomorrow. I can't spare ten guys. I can't spare five. I can't even fucking spare you."

"No...you..." I couldn't catch my breath. I appealed to Tommy. "It's Joel! It's your fucking brother, Tommy!" My voice was shrill, on the edge of hysteria, but Tommy didn't offer any help. His face was already sagging with sorrow. I turned back to Maria. "I thought you were my friend! How could you just leave him there?" The tears I'd been fighting all afternoon started to fall, and I lashed out angrily. "If you don't let me out of here to get him, I will never forgive you, you fucking bitch!"

Maria flinched like I'd slapped her, and then said in a low voice, "I'm not letting you commit suicide, and that's my final decision. Whether you forgive me or not is up to you." She turned to Tommy and said, "Take care of her. Get her home, and try to get her to sleep. I need her on the dam tomorrow." And with that, she turned on her heel and hurried down the street.

Oh, god. How could this be happening? I'd made the wrong choice. I'd saved Pete and warned the town and now Joel was going to die because of what I'd done. I sank to my knees right there in the street, my legs no longer capable of holding me up.

"Ellie..." Tommy reached out his hand toward my shaking shoulder, but I pushed his arm away violently.

"Don't fucking touch me."

And then Tommy was on his knees in front of me, his fingers squeezing my shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. "Ellie, listen to me." The urgency in his voice cut through my haze of panic and grief. "Maria is wrong about this. She worries so much about the town that she can't let herself worry about any one person, and she's _wrong_ about this. Are you hearin' me?"

I looked at him and nodded, a bright star of hope flaring to life in my chest. "Are you going to help me?" I didn't know what I would do if he said no.

"Yes, I'll help you. He's my fucking brother."

Before he finished his sentence, I wrapped my arms around him, the flood of relief making me almost dizzy. Tommy squeezed me back and said, "We'll get him back, Ellie. He's got a little time. Michael will let him stew overnight; he always said that the anticipation just sweetened their fear." The look of disgust on Tommy's face spoke whole volumes.

"Jesus."

Tommy helped me to my feet. "We're gonna need some help, but I can't take a bunch of people off defense. Maria may never forgive me as it is."

"Who can we take?"

Tommy looked at me reluctantly. "You ain't gonna like it."

* * *

Tommy was right. I didn't like it. My exact words to him were, "No fucking way, Tommy. Never in a million fucking years." And yet, here I was, knocking on his door.

He was the best tracker we had, Tommy had argued, and one of the best snipers, but he wasn't on either of the teams Maria had assigned to the dam, so he wouldn't be missed right away. Still, when Sanjay opened his door to my knock I had some mixed fucking feelings, to put it mildly.

"Oh, hey, Ellie. Tommy." He eyed me warily, keeping the door partially between me and his body.

"Your balls are safe for now," I said. "I need your help."

"Hey, babe, who's at the door?" came a voice from inside the house. A woman wandered into the hallway behind Sanjay, and I was surprised to see Max, from Joel's construction crew. The same woman I'd been jealous of this morning. God, was it only this morning? It felt like a year ago.

Max froze when she saw me, and then said, "You've got a lot of nerve coming here, Ellie."

"What?" I was bewildered by her hostility. Max and I had always pretty much gotten along.

Sanjay held out his hand to her and she took it. "It's okay, Max. They need help."

Max snorted. "That's what Maria said last time. Look where that got you."

I shook my head. There was a lot going on here, but I didn't have time to think about any of it, so I just ignored it and got right to the point. "Look, Joel's in danger, and I need your help."

I don't know if it was Joel's name or the desperation in my voice that conveyed the urgency of our mission, but when Tommy said, "Can we come in?" Sanjay and Max both stepped back from the door and let us in without another word.

I told the whole story again, sitting in Sanjay's living room, trying to be as succinct as possible. Every minute that ticked by I felt like I was betraying Joel by not moving toward him.

"So, the three of us, going against Maria's express orders, up against an unknown number of heavily armed paramilitary bandits, led by a fucking psychopath. Sounds great. What could possibly go wrong?" Sanjay said.

My heart fell.

"Sanjay, I know it doesn't sound good," Tommy said. "But you're the only person in town not already headed to the dam who can help us."

"Last resort." Sanjay's voice was bitter. "Yeah. I get that. Ellie wouldn't be here otherwise. Maria hasn't been using me much since..." He looked at me for a moment, and then said, "Hey, guys, can I talk to Ellie in private for a few minutes?"

Max gave me a hard look, then said, "Sure. Tommy and I can go fix some snacks."

My stomach growled at the mention of food. When was the last time I ate anything? Must have been breakfast this morning, and I puked up most of that at the cabin. "Thanks, Max." I was subdued. I still wasn't really sure why she was being so hostile toward me. She and Sanjay obviously had a thing going, and she obviously felt protective of him, but I was the wounded party here, wasn't I?

I was really uncomfortable being in the room alone with Sanjay. What he'd done still hurt, and it still made me angry if I thought about it too much. But I needed his help now too much to let myself get angry.

Sanjay didn't say anything, but he stood up and picked up two big ammo cans from the corner of the room and put them down in front of me. "Most of that is .30-06. I know that'll work in that Remington you carry for wall duty. The rest you can trade for a caliber you need. There're some .22 cartridges in there too."

I just stared at the cans. I knew exactly what they were: Sanjay's winnings from the betting pool. The thought of touching them made my skin crawl. Finally, I said, "No. You should keep it. You earned it, after all." I tried, but I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"No! Fucking..." He ran his hand through his short black hair, making it stand up on end. "I don't fucking want it!" He sat down and looked me in the eye. "Ellie, I joined that fucking pool the first month I was here. I didn't know you from a hole in the wall, but I was new and I was having a hard time fitting in here, everyone's so fucking tight-knit, and I'd been on my own for so long..."

Despite myself, I felt a pang of sympathy for him. I knew what it was like trying to fit in here. I still felt like an outsider, even after five years, and I remembered when Sanjay had joined the community three years back, he'd been reticent and shy. I realized I had never asked him about his life before he came to Jackson, and I wondered if he'd even talk about it if I did.

"And then, I just forgot about it. I got to know you, and you were pretty and fun and smart and a hell of a good shot, and I was glad to have a friend who liked to tell bad jokes and didn't mind if I didn't talk much," he said.

"So why the fuck did you kiss me that night, you asshole?" I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice this time.

He grimaced. "I knew you were in love with Joel the first time I ever saw you two together, so when Maria talked to me, I was happy for the chance to play Cupid. But, ah..." He puffed out his cheeks and then blew his breath out. "I kissed you that night mostly because I wanted to, and I didn't think I'd ever get another chance. I'm really, really sorry, Ellie. I shouldn't have done it."

I stared at Sanjay and felt my memories and perceptions realigning themselves. Sanjay had liked me. Like that. And I hadn't had a fucking clue. He hadn't just been trying to win some awful bet, he'd really been trying to help me with Joel, despite his own feelings for me. And afterward, I'd been really horrible to him. Shit. This also explained why Max had been trying to glare holes through me. "Sanjay, I...fuck. I wish you'd told me all this sooner." I didn't know if I meant how he felt about me or his real intentions that night, but I had to say something.

He smiled wryly. "Well, after the festival you didn't really give me a chance. Besides, Joel cornered me the next day and told me if I came anywhere near you he'd fucking kill me, and I took him at his word. And before...well. It wouldn't have really made a difference, would it?"

I thought about Joel, and how we'd been basically attached at the hip since we came here. We were one entity, not two people, even before we started sleeping together. There was no room for anyone else. "No," I said.

We were silent for a moment, and then I said, "So, how long have you and Max been..."

He smiled, a genuine smile this time, and I realized how much I'd missed seeing that. I could count on Sanjay to reliably laugh at all my stupid jokes, even when everybody else just rolled their eyes. "A couple months. We've been keeping it quiet because Max wasn't sure how Joel would react, considering the death threat and everything."

"Ah. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. He can be a little overprotective." That may have been the understatement of the fucking century.

Sanjay laughed. "You could say that." He stuck his hand out to me. "Friends?"

I shook it. "Friends." It felt good, and I hung on to the feeling as long as I could before my worry for Joel once again dominated my thoughts. "Sanjay, I don't know how much longer Joel has left, or even if he's still alive. Will you help me get him back?"

Tommy and Max came back into the room, carrying a plate of bread and cheese, with pickled beets and onions, and four bottles of beer.

"Yeah, I'll help you. Three of us against a fucking army? Sounds like a good time."

"Four of us," Max said. "Joel's my friend too, and if you think I'm letting you out of my sight, you're a moron." She put her arms around Sanjay. "I can handle myself fine with a bow, and I have an AR-15, too. I can watch Sanjay's back while he does his thing."

I nodded. I wasn't going to turn down help that was offered, especially when it came with an assault rifle. "Okay, let's figure out how we're going to do this."

* * *

In the end, we could only really plan our escape from Jackson. Without knowing how many bandits there were or what we were really up against, we'd just have to get there, do some reconnaissance, and plan to be flexible. Tommy thought our small number worked for us because it would make it easier to infiltrate the enemy camp, but I still wished I was going up there at the head of an army, not a motley crew of four.

Tommy and I caught a few hours of fitful sleep on Sanjay's couch, and we all headed for the gate a few hours before dawn. Tommy's plan was simple: we'd get to the gate during the 3 a.m. shift change, and during the confusion he'd tell the guards that Maria wanted us to run a perimeter check from the outside. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, although I didn't know how jumpy the gate guards would be, due to the impending attack. If they double-checked our story with Maria, we were fucked. Tommy was our ace in the hole, because as Maria's husband, they wouldn't be expecting him to lie about it.

We wouldn't take horses because we'd be quieter on foot, but that meant hiking a few miles at least. We didn't know how far into the forest the camp was; that was where Sanjay's tracking skills would come in. Still, I was nervous about how much time it would take us to even find the camp, much less come up with a plan once we got there. I hoped Michael liked to sleep in, but given what I already knew about him I thought it was unlikely.

The first part of the plan went without a hitch. The guards who let us through the gate were coming off a 12-hour shift, and they just took Tommy at his word without checking his story. We were making our way down the fence to an area where the trees provided a little more cover when I heard the soft, metallic click of a gun.

"I could have you all up in front of the town council on charges of treason." It was Maria. She melted out of the trees and lowered the revolver she was pointing at us, and said to Tommy, "You asshole. You were going to just leave without saying goodbye?"

"Maria..." He said.

She raised her hand to stop him. "I know. I'm not stupid. I figured it out when you didn't come home. For the record, I still think it's a terrible idea. But if it was you up there..." She looked at me, and then back at Tommy. "I'd be doing the same thing."

And then they were in each other's arms, clinging to each other like it was the last time they'd see each other. Maria kissed him and leaned her forehead against his. "If you don't come back to me, I will fucking murder you."

Tommy squeezed her tightly. "I love you. Watch your back today."

Maria nodded, unable to speak, and then looked at me. "Good luck." She turned then and headed back toward the gate, and didn't look back.

Sanjay breathed a sigh of relief and muttered, "Well, it's good to know that if we make it back alive we probably won't be kicked out of town."

And with that, we headed up the trail in the early morning darkness.

* * *

I would have missed the turnoff to the camp completely if Sanjay hadn't been with us. It was during that twilight time right before dawn, when the sky starts to lighten and everything looks uniformly gray. I walked right by it, straining my eyes to see the wheeler tracks on the path, but Sanjay said, "Huh. That's weird," and bent down to examine the right side of the path, clicking his flashlight on to see a little better.

The excitement in his voice brought me circling back to him. "Hey, look at this, Ellie."

And then I saw it too: wheeler tracks that were running not along the trail, but in a perpendicular line across it, terminating in a heavy growth of underbrush.

"It's a false barrier," he said, after examining it for a few seconds. "A fucking good one. You can't even tell if you're not right on top of it." He grabbed my shoulder when I tried to get past him. "Wait. Look." He shone his flashlight at a spot near the ground. I didn't see anything for a second, and then the light gleamed on a thin metal wire that stretched across the edges of the barrier, a few inches from the ground.

"A tripwire," Max said. She'd seen it at almost the same time I had.

"We'll have to watch every step. They're liable to have the entire approach to their camp booby-trapped all to hell," Tommy said, his face grim.

"Must make getting in and out of here on the four-wheelers a real pain in the ass," I said.

Tommy thought about it for a second. "Michael used to have us set traps when everyone was in for the night, and then we'd take everything down again when we headed out in the morning. He called it closing up shop. And he was always real thorough about it. If we go through there right now, there's a good chance none of us will make it to the camp. So our best bet for getting through..."

"Is to wait until they leave for the dam," I finished. Damn it. It made sense, but would they keep Joel alive that long?

Tommy said, "It's your call, Ellie."

I clenched my jaw. Being in charge sucked. "Do you think there's any way we could bypass the trail? Just come at them through the woods?"

Tommy shook his head. "Michael's too smart for that. He'll have picked a location he could defend. That trail is probably the only way in."

I nodded. I figured as much, but I had to ask. "Do you think..." I swallowed hard. "Do you think they'll kill Joel before they leave?"

Tommy looked deeply unhappy. "I don't know, Ellie. Michael liked to think of himself as the general of his little army, so he may just be sending a team out to the dam. But if he's leading them there himself...then he'll want to tie up any loose ends before he leaves camp for the day."

Fuck. My chest ached like I was being stabbed. I looked at Tommy and Sanjay and Max. This was like deciding to save Pete or not all over again. Did I throw us all headlong into certain danger, knowing none of us might even make it past the booby-trapped trail, or did I just wait and hope Joel was still alive when they disarmed the traps, giving us a better chance to get up there in one piece? I was starting to understand why Maria looked so careworn and stressed out all the time. Being responsible for the lives of other people was a heavy fucking burden.

Sanjay and Max were looking at me, their faces drawn with worried sympathy. I knew they would follow me, if I told them we were going up the trail now. I let my breath out. "We wait. Let's find some cover." _Joel, I'm coming for you. Just hang in there a little longer._ I felt awful hoping that Michael would actually draw out whatever suffering he had in mind for Joel, but it was my best hope of rescuing him in the end.

I'm not sure how long we sat there in the bushes on the other side of the trail, waiting for something to happen, but the sun was already starting to climb in the sky when Sanjay touched my arm and pointed to his ear. The whine of engines got closer and closer, until we saw a group of men carefully disarming the tripwire and moving the barrier aside. They streamed through, four four-wheelers, heavily loaded with equipment, and sixteen men on foot. Michael wasn't with them; I felt like I could breathe again. The last guys through replaced the barrier, but didn't reset the tripwire. I guess Tommy had been right about them only setting the traps at night.

We waited until the group was out of sight, and then cautiously made our way across to the barrier. "Keep an eye out for traps, there may still be a few. And he may have men posted on the approach, so keep quiet," Tommy said.

We all nodded. Max said, "Good luck, everybody." And with that, we moved into enemy territory.

I think the element of surprise was the only thing that kept us from getting our stupid asses killed that day. Michael's group had been in the area at least a month; it was enough time to dig in, but also enough time to get complacent. There were a few guards in the woods along the first part of the trail. Tommy snuck up on the first guard we saw from behind and choked him. It startled me a little; I'd seen Joel do the same thing so many times, I really noticed how Tommy moved the same way and had the same, well, _rhythm_, to his kill as his brother. I wondered if it was something they'd learned together. The next guard saw Sanjay sneaking through the bushes, but I stuck my knife in his jugular before he got off a cry.

At this point the trail narrowed down and ran along the mountainside. There was a steep, wooded dropoff on one side and a rock face on the other, which I suppose was one of the reasons Michael chose the location. The bottleneck here was totally exposed, and as far as I could tell there was no way to avoid it.

"I know where he is," Tommy said, when he saw the trail. "This curves around and lets out onto a big meadow with a lake. He would have wanted to set up near water. I spent some time fishing up there a few years back."

"Do you think they have somebody covering that section of the path? Maybe up in one of the trees?" I asked him.

He grimaced. "I don't know. Maybe. But I don't know any other way to get to that lake that won't take us all day."

I nodded and looked out at the trail. It looked deceptively pleasant, the early morning sun dappled with shade from the evergreen trees that grew on the hillside and towered over the path. We were still under the cover of the forest here. I took a deep breath. "Okay. This is what's going to happen. Sanjay, you work your way out as far as you can, but stay under the cover of the trees, and be ready to shoot. Max, you keep an eye out for any reflections or muzzle flashes in those trees along the path. Tommy, I need you to hang back. If shit goes down and it looks like you can pull me out, do it, otherwise all of you get the fuck out of here and don't let them catch you." I set my jaw in determination. "I'm going out there."

Tommy protested like I knew he would, but in the end I was more stubborn than he was. This was my show, and I was the one who would take the risk, end of story. I crouched and moved out onto the path as slowly and carefully as I could. I was wearing brown and gray, which would help me blend in with the background as long as I didn't move too abruptly. I still felt like I had a big fucking target painted on my back.

I was maybe three-quarters of the way across when I heard a crack and the rock right next to my face exploded, sending stinging stone chips into my cheek.

_Fuck!_ I hit the ground so fast I knocked the wind out of myself, and then bounced to my feet and started running. I was too far out to make it back to the trees where the rest of the group was, my only hope now was to make for where the path curved out of sight around the mountain, where Tommy had said it opened out again, and hope the shooter was lousy at hitting a moving target.

There was another gunshot and I braced myself for a hit, but this time there was a grunt from high up in a big pine tree and a body toppled to the ground, thirty feet down the hillside from me. I turned back and gave Sanjay the thumbs-up. I picked my way cautiously to the curve in the trail and peeked around it, hoping the gunshots hadn't been noticed. The trail ahead was empty and led into a copse of trees, and beyond that was the meadow and the lake, just like Tommy said. The mountain ridge curved around and cupped the meadow in a shallow arc on two sides, and on the far side of the open area, snugged up against the ridge, was a collection of tents. I saw a few men moving around in the camp, but nobody was running toward the trail.

I went back around the curve and waved my team forward. When they joined me, we moved up into the trees. Tommy grimaced when he saw the terrain ahead. "I don't fucking like this. There's no cover...they'll see us coming a mile away. How are we gonna get to those tents?"

I looked at the near side of the lake for a long moment, where big clumps of reeds grew and could obscure us for some of the way, but they thinned out to bare ground about halfway down the shoreline. An idea was starting to form in my mind. I picked up a rock, hefting it in my hand, and then I turned to Sanjay. "Can you do any good from here?"

Sanjay considered the camp, then shook his head. "No, it's too far. It's over a mile, at least. I'm good, but those would be long fucking shots."

I nodded. "Okay, where can you do the most damage?"

He looked over the terrain, and then pointed at the ridge. "Up there. I'll have elevation, and it gets me way closer. Hell, if the ridge goes all the way across, I can set up in their back yard."

"Good. Do it. How long do you think it will take you to get in place?"

"Thirty minutes, if we move now," Max said. Sanjay nodded in agreement. "Looks like there's a little bit of a climb, but there's a trail." She pointed to a tiny game trail that I'd missed, winding up the steep, rocky face of the ridge.

"All right, guys. Be careful. I'll try to give you as much time as possible, but when shit starts happening it's likely to happen fast. And Sanjay, if you see a tall dude with silver hair, shoot him in the fucking eye."

Sanjay smiled a ghost of a grin, and then he and Max started up the trail to the ridge.

I looked at Tommy, weighing the rock in my hand. "Do you remember how to snorkel?"

* * *

The summer Joel taught me how to swim, we'd made up a game where we'd breathe through hollow reeds and try to sneak up on each other underwater. When he'd catch me, he'd lift me up over the water and throw me as far as he could, while I giggled and shrieked my head off. When I caught him, I'd climb up on his shoulders and he'd wade out as deep as he could and then I'd launch myself off him, diving deep enough to touch the bottom of the reservoir. I'd been sixteen, and Joel had been invincible. Untouchable. I remembered his strong arms cradling me in the water, and the feeling of weightlessness when he threw me through the air, and I wondered if that was when I started falling in love with him, or if there was some other little thing that started it. Or maybe there was no one thing, just the sum of everything.

Unlike the pleasant coolness of the reservoir in the summertime, the lake water was fucking freezing. Up this high in the mountains, it was probably all runoff from melted snow, and it was fall, so it wasn't like it was the warmest day of the year. Tommy and I had worked our way along the lakeshore as far as we could before the cover of the reeds disappeared. When we couldn't go any farther, we cut reeds for ourselves and waded in.

Holding heavy rocks in both hands kept us weighted down so we didn't make much of a ripple as we walked along the lake bed, breathing through our makeshift snorkels. _This is crazy,_ I thought as I pushed through the murky water. _If this actually works, I'll fucking shit myself._

Tommy had accepted my plan without too much protest, except to remind me that the water would be fucking cold and we'd probably get hypothermia before we made it halfway. But in the end we didn't have much choice. The water provided the only cover available, and we had to use it. It wasn't that far to go, but my hands and feet were turning numb by the time we reached the cover of a cluster of reeds near the camp. We hauled ourselves out of the water, shivering, and just huddled together for a few minutes, trying to share the meager warmth in our bodies until the morning sun thawed us out enough to go on.

"Let's not do that again," I whispered, my teeth chattering.

"You said it, not me," Tommy said, blowing on his shaking hands.

Once we stopped shaking, we crouched there in the cover of the reeds and checked out the arrangement of tents. We were in a good spot, off to the side, behind a little cluster of two- and three-man tents that were probably being used just for sleeping in, and we could see bigger, square, building-style tents over closer to the ridge. "Where's the most likely spot for them to be holding him?" I breathed in Tommy's ear.

He jerked his chin toward the big tents. "One of those, but there's no telling which one."

I nodded. "Okay. We'll have to check each one. I'll go up the right side, you you think you can make your way over to the left? We can meet in the middle."

Tommy opened his mouth and for a second it looked like he was going to argue with me. Then he snapped his mouth shut and nodded, frowning. "Be careful."

"Duh. You too."

I crept forward in a crouch to the line of tents, breathing evenly to quiet my heartbeat and listening for any movement. My revolver was in my hip holster, my rifle in a holster across my back, and I held a six-inch hunting knife in my hand. My mother's switchblade was tucked into my bra, mostly for luck.

I made it to the line of bigger tents, and I saw that there was a narrow alleyway of space between the backs of the tents and the ridge, enough for me to creep behind them. When I got to the first tent, I stopped and put my ear up to the canvas, but I couldn't hear any movement inside. As slowly as I could, I inserted the point of my knife into the cloth and pulled down, the sharp edge of my blade making barely a whisper as it ripped through the canvas. When the slit was long enough, I put my eye up to the hole. The tent was full of boxes and containers; supplies, or an armory. Nobody was inside. I suppressed my disappointment and moved on to the next tent in the line.

As I crept forward past the narrow alley between tents that led back out to the center of the camp, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. The ground here reeked of piss, to the point that the ammonia was making my eyes water. Someone was obviously using this spot as a convenient latrine, which meant I needed to hurry the fuck up before…

"Well, hello there, pet."

I sprang to my feet and whirled around, holding my knife in front of me, my heart hammering in my chest. I knew that voice.

Michael was standing there, his hands at ease at his sides and a faint, disbelieving smile on his face, like he'd just seen a dog do a card trick. "You're a long way from home."

I lunged for him with my knife, but the guy was so fast I didn't even realize what had happened until he had my arm twisted behind my back and one hand on the back of my head, pressing my face into the piss-soaked dirt. "Fucking let me go, you fucking fuck!" I yelled. The more I struggled, the harder he yanked my arm, until it felt like my shoulder was about to come out if its socket.

"I really do despair for the vocabulary of the younger generation," he said. He let go of my head and straightened up when I stopped fighting him, but kept the pressure on my arm. "Just lie still for a moment, love. You interrupted me." I felt a boot shoved into the small of my back, and then heard the dry click of a zipper being undone. When the stream of urine splashed onto the ground near my face, I screwed up my eyes and mouth in shock and jerked back, but Michael just pulled back on my arm again until tears of pain and humiliation burned my eyes. I could feel droplets of warm piss hitting my face, splashing up from the ground.

When he was done, I heard him zip up again, and then he was pulling me to my feet while I spat mud and urine out of mouth. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you sick motherfucker?" I asked, scrubbing my mouth with my free hand.

He ignored me. "Now. I'm faster and stronger than you. So I'm going to let go of your arm now and you're going to be a good girl and let me disarm you, and I won't have to hurt you any more."

Right. Like I believed that. When he reached for my revolver, I turned around and tried to knee him in the balls. He punched me, hard, in the stomach, and I went down on my knees on the urine-soaked ground again, coughing and gagging.

"You've got spirit, kitten. I'll give you that," he said as he stripped my guns from me. I'd dropped the hunting knife when he'd first attacked me, and he picked it up and tucked it into his belt. "I do hope you don't break too quickly."

As he dragged me to my feet, I realized he'd missed my switchblade, still tucked into my bra, under my left breast. I concentrated on its comforting weight against my skin as Michael's hand clamped down on my shoulder like a steel trap.

* * *

**Author's Note**

Cover Me Up will continue *very soon* in Fall (Part 4).


	8. Fall (Part 4)

**Author's Note**

**Notice: **This chapter contains some graphic violence and lots of general creepiness.

* * *

**Fall (Part 4)**

Michael's fingers felt as hard as iron as he twisted my arm behind my back and gripped my shoulder, using it to direct my movements. "Now what, I wonder, is a pretty young girl like yourself doing sneaking around my camp?" He pushed me ahead of him towards the center of camp, where five men were drinking from steaming mugs around a cookfire. When they saw me, they stood up in surprise.

_Now would be a really good fucking time to shoot this fucker, Sanjay,_ I thought, but the shot never came, and Michael's hand dug into my shoulder harder.

"Sir..." said one of the men.

"McAllister, your men have disappointed me. I found this..." He shook me by the shoulder and twisted my arm harder, just to make me cry out. "...skulking about near the armory tent."

McAllister's face went white. "Sir, I...I don't know how she..."

"I'm not interested in explanations or excuses. I'm going to ask our new friend a few questions. In the meantime, why don't you make yourself useful and search for any other unwanted visitors; there are likely more than just this one. We'll discuss your failings later."

McAllister swallowed hard and nodded. "Yes, sir." He pulled a whistle out if his shirt and blew on it, and men started streaming out of tents and into the center of the camp. Fuck. There were at least twenty of them. I'd really been hoping that the raid on the dam would mean they left just a skeleton crew here, but obviously not.

And then Michael was turning me around and marching me toward the big square tents again, and through the door flap of the tent beside the supply tent I'd peeked into.

Joel was there, sitting in a chair against the rear wall of the tent, his head bowed to his chest. He was so still that for one sickening moment I thought he was dead. My body involuntarily jerked toward him when I saw him, but Michael pulled on the arm he had twisted behind my back, wrenching a cry of pain from my lips.

At that, Joel slowly raised his head. Relief warred with alarm in my mind. The left side of his face was covered in bruises, and his beard was matted with blood from a long, shallow cut on his right cheekbone. He kept his face blank, his eyes bleak and inscrutable.

"I apologize for the interruption, Killer. We'd just barely gotten started. But look, you have a visitor!" He thrust me forward to stand in front of Joel, past a wide makeshift table made from logs that had been lashed together. Large eye hooks were screwed into the edges at regular intervals, and I hated to think what Michael used them for.

Joel looked up at me. I saw with a pang that his hands and feet were bound to the plastic chair with heavy-duty zip ties, and there were deep cuts in his wrists where he'd obviously tried to free himself. "I've never seen her before," he said, in a bored tone of voice. "I told you, I'm just passing through here."

"Yes, you did say that," Michael said softly. With a strength and speed that was almost inhuman, he whipped my arm back around in front of my body. Before I could even register relief at the release of pressure, he spun me around and pushed me face down onto the rough wooden table. He held my wrist in an iron grip, and I felt his body arch back, his arm raised. I didn't have time to wonder what he was going to do before he drove my hunting knife down with brutal force and pinned my hand to the table.

I screamed.

"Mother...FUCKER!" The knife was a hot spike of pain in my hand, and the sight of it pinning me to the table made my stomach heave. I bit my lips to suppress a whimper, but I couldn't stop the tears from spilling out of my eyes and down my face.

Michael's steel fingers were on my chin, roughly wrenching my gaze from the sight of my impaled hand to his ice-blue eyes. "Focus, darling. Right here. Now you tell me...and I'll know if you're lying...do you know this man?" He pointed at Joel.

Oh, shit. Fuck my fucking face, right in the mouth. Why hadn't I ever tried harder to learn to conceal my thoughts? The last thing I wanted to do was let Michael know I loved Joel. It would give him way too much leverage. Over both of us. "N-no!" I stammered. "I've never seen him before—" I screamed again as Michael jiggled the hilt of the hunting knife, moving it in my wound while still keeping it pinned to the table. It fucking hurt like a motherfucker.

Michael sighed. "There is nothing I hate more than lying, except betrayal. But Killer there knows all about betrayal, don't you?"

Joel's face was totally impassive, and I was suddenly fiercely proud of him. It must be killing him to see me in so much pain, but he was keeping it together and not giving Michael an inch. I gritted my teeth, determined to make him just as proud of me.

I took a deep breath and fought off the waves of pain pulsing from my hand. "I was just up here hunting by myself when I stumbled on your camp, you sick fuck. This guy is a total stranger."

"Hm." Michael said. He stepped away from me and sat down in an empty chair. The release of tension I felt when he stepped out of arm's reach made me shake, but then he drew an 18-inch Bowie knife from a sheath on his hip. He took a sharpening stone from his pocket and started slowly running the length of the blade up the stone, and the quiet _sshhhick_ as he did it ratcheted my tension all the way back up again. I didn't like to even contemplate what he was going to do with that knife.

"You know," he said to me conversationally, like were were sitting there having fucking tea or something, "something I've noticed over the years is that when a person under duress offers up information for free, it's almost always a lie."

_Sshhhick._

I frowned in confusion. The pain in my hand was making it hard to follow him.

"I didn't ask you why you were here, nor did I ask you if you had company, and yet you told me both. I find that very...interesting."

_Sshhhick._

Fuck. I'd fucked it up already.

"By extension, it makes me believe you are also lying about knowing my old friend here," he motioned to Joel with the tip of his knife.

I clenched my teeth. "I said..."

"Yes, darling, hush. I know what you said. I just find you disappointingly untrustworthy." He stood up and I cringed away from him, but he was heading for Joel. "I wonder if it would change your answer if I dug his eye out with my knife?" He placed the tip of the knife just under Joel's right eye and started to push.

I couldn't help myself. The second I saw the tip of the knife digging into Joel's skin, I cried, "No!"

Michael lowered the knife and turned his attention back to me, his eyes alight with satisfaction. "Ah. Now we're getting somewhere."

I risked a glance at Joel's face. His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched, and red trickled down his cheek from the new cut. It looked like he was crying tears of blood.

Michael stepped away for a moment; it sounded like he was rummaging in a box. I could feel the handle of my switchblade digging into my chest, so while his back was turned to me, I rolled over onto my right side and reached my left hand up my shirt until I was cupping the familiar shape of the hilt in my palm. I rolled back, just as Michael turned back toward me. He was carrying a handful of zip ties, the same kind Joel was bound with. I craned my neck to look up at him, trying to get a read on his next move, but his face was hard as stone.

"Now, kitten, I'm going to take that nasty knife out of your hand, and then we're going to find out how you know my old protégé. No sudden movements, now."

I had time to think, _Protégé? As if. Joel would never have been a willing participant in this kind of shit. This guy is a fucking psychopath..._ And then Michael was wrenching the hunting knife out of my hand and I couldn't suppress another scream. God, it fucking hurt.

I had to cradle my bleeding hand to my chest for a second before I remembered the switchblade in my other hand. When Michael seized my right wrist and pulled my arm away from my body, I flipped the switch with my left thumb and buried the blade in the meat of his thigh.

He dropped my wrist and cursed, stumbling backwards, and I bounced off the table and made a dash for the doorway, but suddenly he was standing there in front of me, blocking the way. I ran right into him, and it was like running into a steel door. His muscles were lean and hard, and I just bounced right off him. _Damn it, this fucker is quick._

He wrapped an arm like a steel band around me and lifted me off my feet, and I grabbed his forearm and bit down as hard as I could, grinding my teeth against his flesh. He dropped me, and then grabbed both my wrists and stretched my arms out away from my body to make it harder for me to struggle. "Kitten has claws." He looked down at the bleeding bite mark on his forearm. "And teeth." He grinned at me. That feral grin on his face was maybe the most frightening thing I'd ever seen. "That's going to cost you a finger, pet."

He wrestled me back over to the table, where he ran a zip tie through one of the metal eye hooks, and then around my right wrist, pulling it tight against my skin. I tried kicking him, but he avoided my flailing legs easily and stretched my left arm out to the other side of the table, where he bound my wrist to another eye hook. My ankles came next, until I was spread-eagled on the rough log tabletop and crying from frustration and exhaustion.

I couldn't move much, but I could turn my head to the side and see Joel. His face was still blank, but looked strained, and I could see his muscles bunching and flexing in a vain attempt to loosen his own bindings. Blood dripped from his wrists to the floor. And then, behind his boot, so quickly I wasn't even sure I'd seen it, the tent wall raised up and I saw an eye.

_Tommy!_ It must be. We would have heard some kind of commotion by now if they'd found him. And what the fuck was Sanjay doing? Hope surged in my chest. We weren't dead yet.

Michael moved between us, not even breathing heavily. "That's quite a little spitfire you have there, Killer. Your daughter?" Joel didn't answer, but I saw his eyes tighten, and Michael did too. "No. Oh, you old dog Joel!" He looked at me again, shaking his head. "You always said you weren't interested in the young ones, but I can certainly appreciate the appeal of this one, Killer."

He looked down at me. "Did he ever tell you why we called him Killer?" I didn't answer, but Michael continued anyway. "The very first group of tourists he caught in Philadelphia, I think he was keen to prove himself. There were, what, seven of them? Two men, their wives, and three charming little children. Your friend there," he pointed the tip of his knife at Joel, "slaughtered them so efficiently I thought I was looking at myself."

I shook my head. He was lying to me. Joel wouldn't do something like that. He wouldn't kill a little kid. "You sure do like to hear yourself talk a lot," I said. It sounded a lot braver than I felt.

Michael's eyes widened and he turned back to Joel. "You mean to tell me she honestly doesn't know..." When he saw Joel's angry glare, he started laughing, a deep gut laugh. "I feel like Christmas came early this year," he said, wiping his eyes.

He was standing over me again. "Let me tell you a little bit about your friend, Joel. And I want you to remember," he leaned down so that his mouth was right by my ear, "that everything I do to you is something your lover has already done to someone else."

He stood up and punched me right in the eye, slamming the back of my head into the table. I saw stars and moaned in pain. "Our Killer is good with his fists, isn't he? He never really developed my finesse with a knife, but he could use one to good effect."

Michael drew the point of his Bowie knife from the base of my throat to my pelvis, and then used it to flip up my t-shirt. The sharp knife cut through the thin material like it was smoke, and he split it right up the middle. He gently moved the two halves of the shirt to either side of my chest, exposing my bra.

Joel growled like a wounded bear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his shoulders heaving, trying to escape the bonds that held him to his chair. My mind went blank with terror, and I heard a high whining sound. When I realized it came from my own throat, I was embarrassed by how scared I was. I wanted to be stoic, to pretend what Michael was doing didn't bother me at all; I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of getting to me. But I was just too freaked out to be calm.

Michael's knife point dug under the front clasp of my bra, scratching the thin skin over my sternum, and then the fabric parted and I gasped as my chest was fully exposed to his icy gaze. I tried to twist in my bonds, to somehow cover myself, but I couldn't. "You know, I once saw Killer cut a man's nipples off, just to get him to tell me where his wife was hiding. I don't believe I'll subject you to that, though. Your nipples are lovely right where they are." He bent over and took one in his mouth, first sucking it gently and then biting down, harder and harder. He only stopped when I screamed again.

I was so revolted by his touch that I wanted to puke. But when I craned my neck to look at my breast and saw the blood pooling in his teethmarks, a white sheet of rage crashed over me, and I heard myself shouting, "Fucking OW, motherfucker! Just when I thought you couldn't get any fucking creepier, you son of a bitch!"

Michael smiled at Joel and said, "Oh, I like her, Killer." And then he picked up my forehead in one large palm so he could slam the back of my head against the table. The world went black.

* * *

"...so when Philadelphia was picked clean I started thinking about the old country, and I asked myself, why are we hanging onto society as we knew it, when we can build a brand new one? That's when I decided to carve out a realm here in the west."

The pounding my my head dragged me back to consciousness, all unwilling, to the sound of Michael's voice. _He must be talking to Joel,_ I thought. I kept my eyes closed and listened.

There was a smacking thud, and Joel groaned. Deprived of reactions from me, I realized, Michael was beating Joel instead. I heard Joel spit. "This the part where you set yourself up as king?"

"I prefer Overlord. But essentially, yes. Each of my lieutenants has been given his own territory, and will keep it clear of infected for his people, who in turn will farm his lands and provide sustenance for their lord."

Joel laughed bitterly. "You mean serfs."

Michael sounded delighted. "After all these years, you still surprise me...I had no idea you had an understanding of feudal society. It's almost a pity I can't keep you alive. By the end of the day tomorrow, all your farmer friends will be on their way to their new lives as serfs in my dominion. I'm sorry to say you shan't be joining them. You're just the icing on the cake. You see, Killer, a successful feudal system starts with a strong overlord with the ability to shape his men to his will. But you always need expendables to do the dirty work. I was thrilled to stumble upon your little community here."

Where the fuck was Tommy? Had I imagined seeing him? Why was he taking so long?

I didn't move or open my eyes, but I could suddenly feel Michael's breath on my cheek. "I think our little kitten is awake again, Killer."

"Don't hurt her." Joel's voice was quiet, but urgent. I knew how much it cost him to say the words. "I'll do anything you want, but don't hurt her."

"No, Joel." There was genuine anger in Michael's voice now, instead of his usual mocking tone. "That's not how this works. You will do anything I want _and _I will hurt her. I haven't even begun paying you back for your betrayal."

He patted my cheek. "I'm glad you're awake, pet. Where were we?" I opened my one good eye; the one Michael had punched was already swelling shut. "Ah, yes. I was demonstrating Killer's techniques as an interrogator. Do you know what his genius really was? It was the use of brute force. Your man was absolutely unmatched in knowing just how much force he could apply to get what he wanted without killing his subject outright. It was marvelous to watch him work. He liked to start with fingers."

Michael took the index finger of my left hand and snapped it sideways like a twig. I half-swallowed another scream. So many things hurt on my body that I was starting to feel dizzy. "Some men like to cut them off, but Killer knew that a break was a more effective interrogation tool. You can come back to it over and over again." While he talked, Michael tapped my broken finger lightly, sending jabs of pain through my stressed nerve endings, all the way up to my shoulder, and I cried out with each tap.

"Stop it, Michael! Just stop it!" The desperation in Joel's voice was so acute he sounded almost deranged. "I'm the one you want to hurt, so stop using her as your fucking punching bag!"

Michael slowly turned around and stared at Joel while I tried not to whimper. "Joel. You always underestimated me. Don't you think I know exactly how to hurt a man like you? With her here, I can break you without even touching you. The only real question is how long it will take. You're showing signs of strain already, but I think when you watch every man in my camp rape your little girlfriend, you'll crack. You remember how effective that technique can be." He reached out and squeezed my breast with cold fingers, and even though I was biting my lips I couldn't stop the high-pitched squeal of fear my throat made.

Joel's rage was incandescent. He bucked in the chair and roared, "Michael, if you or anyone else fucking touches her I will rip your fucking heart out!"

Michael smiled in grim satisfaction. "An honest response, at last."

There was a huge boom from outside, and the concussion of an explosion shook the ground. Without a word to the two of us, Michael sheathed his knife and strode out of the tent, his mouth set in a hard line.

The second he was gone, Joel said, with despair in his voice, "Ellie, you shouldn't have come."

Despite my pain and fear I bristled. "I wasn't going to just sit back and let him kill you."

Joel laughed bitterly. "Killin' me was never up for debate. I was just hopin' I could get him to do it quickly."

"Don't talk like that!" Jesus, Joel wasn't holding it together as well as I thought. "We need to figure out how to get out of here."

"Ellie, you don't know him like I do." His eyes were deeply haunted. "Whatever that is out there, whatever's happening, it ain't help for us. It's just a ruse to mess with our minds. He always said that hope was the fastest way to break someone."

I tried to keep my voice calm for him. "Or maybe it's Tommy, killing a bunch of fucking bandits." I heard a faraway crack, like a large-caliber rifle fired from a distance. "And it sounds like Sanjay finally fucking showed up, too."

Before Joel could reply, a knife ripped through the canvas wall of the tent, right next to where Joel was sitting, and Tommy stepped through, grinning his head off. "Y'all ready for the fucking calvary?"

"Tommy!" Joel's voice was strangled, and I could tell he was fighting some strong emotions. "Set her free first." He jerked his head toward where I lay spread out on the table.

Tommy stopped smiling when he saw me. "Oh, Christ, Ellie. I'm sorry it took me so long. Those guys were crawlin' all over the place after they caught you, so I had to hide out in the armory tent until the coast was clear. When I heard you screamin'..." He shuddered as he cut the zip ties binding me to the table.

I sat up and pulled my destroyed shirt around me, careful not to jostle my broken finger. "It's okay," I said. "I'm okay. Set Joel loose." I could still hear Sanjay's sniper rifle going, and now there was the accompanying sound of an automatic rifle. That probably meant they'd gotten somebody up on the ridge to look for Sanjay, and I hoped he and Max were doing all right. The rifle cracks didn't let up, so I took it as a good sign. "Was that big explosion you?" I asked Tommy, as he knelt to cut Joel's bindings.

He grinned again. "I said I was in the armory tent. You wouldn't believe the ordinance they got in there. I was tryin' to figure out what to do, when I found this little crate full of homemade nail bombs, big ones. So I drug it out and planted a few here and there, and then I circled around to where ten of those fuckers were havin' some kind of pow wow and just rolled a big one right into the middle of 'em. That's when I saw Michael come outta here lookin' like somebody'd punched his mother."

Joel was standing up and flexing his wrists. Then he was at my side, and even though his face was dirty and covered in blood I wanted him to kiss me. I needed him to kiss me. Instead, he stripped off his flannel shirt and wrapped it around my shoulders. His face was blank and hard again when he looked at Tommy over my head and said, "Take care of her." He picked up my hunting knife and the revolver Michael had taken off me. "I got someone to kill." Without a backward glance, he walked out of the tent.

"Joel, fucking stop!" I yelled. "Don't go out there by yourself!" I hopped off the table and was totally surprised when my legs buckled underneath me. I cried out in pain as I caught myself with my hands, the broken finger on my left hand throbbing in time with the impalement wound in my right palm. Tommy helped me back to my feet and sat me down on the table.

"Just hold your horses, Ellie." He was holding my wrists and looking at my damaged hands. "You're in no condition to fight. You can't even pull a trigger. And that finger needs settin' before it swells up too bad."

"Okay, but just fucking hurry up about it," I said. I didn't want to let Joel out of my sight for a second longer than I had to.

Tommy held my left wrist in one hand and took my index finger gently in his other. "Ready?"

I nodded. I really was not. I clenched my jaw against my scream of pain as he pulled steadily until we both felt the broken bones realigning themselves. "God fucking damn it!"

I fought off a wave of dizziness as Tommy said, "You got any tape?"

I waved my right hand. "In my pack. Fuck, that hurt." It was somewhere over on the side of the tent, where Michael had dropped it earlier. Tommy gently taped my fingers together, and the second he was done I hopped off the table again. This time my legs held. "Come on," I said. It had been a minute or two since I'd heard any rifle shots, and I was really fucking anxious about what that meant.

He didn't argue with me.

In the end, we needn't have worried. Walking through the camp was like walking through a ghost town. Bodies littered the ground, but even though my heart stopped every time I saw a new one, none of them were Michael or Joel. Smoke still curled from a depression in the ground near a cluster of tents by the lake; that was probably where Tommy's bomb had gone off.

"Where the fuck are they?" Tommy muttered, his body tense and on guard.

But I'd already heard Joel's voice, coming from one of the big tents near the back of the camp. I ran towards it.

"...not...anything...like...you!" Joel was sitting on Michael's chest, and with each word he was swinging Michael's big Bowie knife down onto the man's face with all the force in his body. My hunting knife was buried in Michael's heart; he was clearly already dead. I froze for a second, eerily reminded of when I'd killed David.

I reached my hand out and touched Joel's shoulder, and he turned on me for a second, snarling like a feral dog. "Joel, stop. It's me."

At the sound of my voice, his face sagged and the bloody knife dropped from his nerveless fingers. "Ellie..." His face twisted, and he buried his head in my chest.

I ran my hands over the broad planes of his back and said into his hair, "Oh, baby. I'm here. It's okay."

He stiffened and shook his head, pulling away from me. "No." He wouldn't look at my face. He looked down at his bare chest, covered in blood, and shuddered, then he stood and without another word he left the tent.

Damn it, what now? "Joel..." I called after him. Tommy and I followed him down to the lakeshore and watched him wade in up to his hips and then crouch to submerge himself, violently scrubbing the blood from his body. He dunked his head underwater and scrubbed at his hair and beard. When he was done, he stood in the water shivering, his head bowed and his back to us. I looked at Tommy, but he shrugged. He didn't know what was going on in Joel's head any better than I did.

"Joel," I said, in a quiet voice.

He didn't turn around, but he said, "Do you know what he said to me? At the end? He said he was glad it was me. Dying at the hands of a man like himself was how he wanted to go." Joel shivered again, and I couldn't tell if it was from the cold water or from the memory of Michael's words.

"Joel, you're not—" I said.

He went on, like I hadn't spoken. "Everything he said back there was true. I did all of it. And worse. I am _just_ like him."

_Oh, god, Joel._ My heart ached at his words. I had known that Joel was an efficient, brutal, killer, but it was like I was seeing him clearly for the first time. I finally realized exactly what it had meant, that he had survived for so long, and survived through those hard years at the start of the pandemic. I hated what he had done, and I hated it more that he'd had to do it. I waded out into the water until I stood beside him and took his hand. It was rough and callused from his work, and his knuckles were split and bleeding from his fight with Michael. That hand had spilled untold gallons of blood, but it had also protected me, and touched me in ways I didn't want anyone else touching me. I kissed it.

Joel finally looked at me, and the cuts on his cheek were livid against his pale skin. His eyes burned into me, full of terror and hope.

I reached out and touched his cheek. "What you did, you did to survive. And everything you did, even the terrible things, brought you one step closer to me. That sick fuck back there...he enjoyed what he did. It wasn't just about survival for him. And that makes you different as night and day."

Joel opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but before he could speak, his face twisted into a silent sob. He buried his face in his hands and his body shook with huge, heaving cries that had probably been a very long time coming. I stroked his shoulder until he put his arms around me and held me like I was the only thing keeping him from spinning off the face of the earth. I could feel his hot tears on my cheek.

When he could finally speak, Joel said, "I don't know what I ever did to deserve you, but it must have been big." I kissed him, and the touch of his lips on mine was like finally coming home.

"Probably," I said. I could see Sanjay and Max on the lakeshore, running toward us, and the last knot of tension in my stomach uncoiled. "Now, can we get out of this lake? I'm fucking freezing."

* * *

Cover Me Up will continue in Fall (Part 5).


	9. Fall (Part 5)

**Author's Note**

After all the angst and drama, here is a big slice of lemon meringue pie. With a side of lemon tart. And some lemonade.

* * *

**Fall (Part 5)**

"In conclusion, I'd like to formally recognize Ellie's contributions to the defense of the town and the people of Jackson, and I further propose we invest her as town sheriff, with a permanent seat on the town council and the duty to coordinate protection for the town and the dam. Other duties to be defined at a later date." Maria stood up, only wincing a little bit. She'd been shot in the side during the skirmish at the dam, but the bullet had gone clean through and now, three weeks later, she was healing up nicely. When we got back to town and Tommy found out she'd been hurt, he'd been beside himself with guilt and worry until Maria had almost punched him in the face to get him to stop apologizing.

Joel squeezed my hand and murmured in my ear, "That's your cue." I stood up too, my hands slick with sweat. God, I was nervous. There were over a hundred people at the town meeting in the VFW hall, and now all of them were looking at me.

"I, uh," I licked my lips and looked down at Joel in panic. I couldn't remember my speech! He smiled up at me encouragingly, and the terror subsided to a manageable level. "I'd just like to say that if you make me your sheriff, I'll do everything in my power to protect this town, and every single person in it." There was silence. I think maybe they were expecting a longer speech. I nodded, and said, "So, uh. That's all." I sat back down. There was a small wave of laughter, and I could see Sanjay sitting in the front row, grinning and giving me a thumbs-up.

Maria smiled at me. I'd admitted my fear of public speaking to her when she told me about this stupid sheriff idea, and she'd practically laughed her head off. "Are you telling me," she'd said, holding her bandaged side, "That the woman who can walk into a bandit camp with five-to-one odds without even batting an eyelash is afraid to get up in front of people and just talk?" She'd laughed so hard she'd busted two stitches.

"Thank you, Ellie," Maria said. "Now, I've just spent plenty of time telling you how her bravery, leadership, and initiative saved all of our asses, but before we put this to a vote, I'll open the floor to any dissenting opinions."

"I strongly object to this proposal." It was Doug Curtain, the preacher from the Congregation of the Blood of the Lamb, no big fucking surprise there. He stood up and took an oratorial stance that made it look like he was going to be at it for a while. I suppressed a sigh and tried not to roll my eyes too obviously.

"While I'm sure we all appreciate the fact that Ellie brought Pete back in time for him to warn us about the attack on the dam, she wasn't even here to participate in the town's defense when the attack came," Doug said. I saw what he was doing, minimizing my efforts by saying Pete had warned the town, and not me, and trying to make it sound like I'd shirked my responsibilities.

Sanjay leapt to his feet. "Yeah, that's because she was killing the rest of the bandits, including the dude who wanted to turn us all into slaves, and saving one of the town's citizens from being tortured to death!"

Doug smiled like a cat that had caught a mouse. He was just getting warmed up. "Exactly. She has been fornicating with her own father, which is against God's natural order, and against what should be the laws of our society." There was a general groan from the crowd—they'd heard all this before—but Doug just raised his voice. "The second her father and lover was in danger she dropped all of her obligations to this town to save him, which shows poor judgement as well as moral weakness. We can't stand for an authority figure in this town whose morals are so corrupt! Not to mention the fact that she's infected, and an abomination to God."

There was a burst of voices in response, but I thought I heard more arguments against Doug's statement than support for it. Maria banged her fist on the table and yelled, "Order, order, people! One at a time!"

I stood up again, my heart in my throat, and the crowd quieted down. They wanted to hear what I had to say, I realized. "Doug isn't entirely wrong," I said. There was an audible murmur of surprise. "I mean, except about Joel being my dad, which is so fu—" I stopped myself from swearing, but just barely. There were a lot of little kids here with their parents, and Maria had advised me to clean up my language a little, at least in public spaces. "Uh, I mean, it's just not true. I don't have any way to prove it to you, but..."

"I believe I can put that rumor to rest for good," a voice said from the crowd. Doc stood up and continued, "I keep medical records on every citizen of this town, and those include basic information like blood type, so that in emergencies where a transfusion is necessary, I can match people up quickly. I think Ellie and Joel will forgive me for revealing that Ellie's blood is type O-positive, while Joel's is type B-negative. It is genetically impossible for Joel to be Ellie's biological father. In fact, Doug, since your blood type is also O-positive, you are far more likely to be Ellie's father than Joel, genetically speaking."

There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd, and tears pricked my eyes. I nodded thanks at Doc, who smiled at me and sat down again. Doug looked like he'd just eaten an entire lemon.

Feeling a lot more confident, I smiled and said, "Well, now that's out of the way, let me address Doug's other excellent points. It's true that I wasn't here for the defense of the dam, which to some of you may seem like I abandoned my duty to protect the town. And to be totally honest, I didn't do much up there in the mountains either, except get myself caught and tortured. Tommy was the one who set Joel and me free, and killed half the men there with one of their own bombs, and Sanjay and Max picked off the rest of them. Joel…" I stopped and looked down at him. I didn't know if he wanted me to say this, but his eyes were even and clear, so I went ahead. "Joel is the one who killed Michael."

I was warming up to it now. "The only thing I did was insist on going, and then find the right people to bring with me. And yes, Joel is especially important to me. But let me tell you all this: If it had been any one of you instead of Joel—even you, Doug—captured by those men, I still would have insisted on going. We are a community, and we have to stick together. And that means we don't leave our people behind. It would make me look a hell of a lot better if I told you that my plan all along was to kill Michael and all of the men he had up there, but that would be a lie. That was just luck." I'd decided that honesty was the best policy. It may have meant that my political career was over before it started, but I had to live with myself somehow. "As for my being infected, well, that's old news. I've lived here now for five years, and Joel and I have been fu—, er, bon—, I mean..." I blushed.

"Havin' intimate relations," Joel clarified, in a voice that carried. There was another little wave of laughter from the crowd.

I cleared my throat in embarrassment. "Yeah. For months now. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that in all that time, none of you have been affected. Whatever I have, I think it's pretty clear that I can't pass it along."

A man in the third row stood up slowly. It was Pete, I saw with pleasure, who after three weeks in the hospital was finally out and about. "I'd like to add something. That young woman there," he pointed at me, "Saved my life. Even when I told her not to. I wanted her to leave me there to die, but she wouldn't take no for an answer, even when she had good reason to hate me. If that's your idea of an abomination, Doug, then I think that's on you, not her. And if that's really your only objection, then I move we put this to a vote."

Doug glared at Pete, but Doc, Pete, and I had pretty much knocked all the wind out of his sails, so he sat down again, his brows lowered in a frown.

"All right," Maria said. "All in favor of making Ellie town sheriff, raise your hands."

Beside me, Joel's hand went straight into the air. I couldn't stop the foolish grin that split my face, especially when I saw that a clear majority of the people in the room had also raised their hands, including some of Doug's congregation. It looked like he was hemorrhaging supporters left and right.

Maria banged her fist on the table triumphantly. "Motion carries." She turned to me with a huge smile on her face. "Congratulations, Sheriff."

There was a cheer. An actual cheer. As I looked around the room at the sea of smiling faces, I realized that even though I'd always felt like I didn't quite fit in here, somewhere along the line I'd actually become a part of this community. It wasn't just me and Joel against the world anymore. We had friends, and family, and people who gave a shit whether we lived or died. As the first of the well-wishers reached me, I looked down at Joel, and I could tell he felt it too. He was wearing a look of bemusement, almost disbelief, on his face, like he was happy but he couldn't understand how that was possible.

I remembered his words to me, when we returned to Jackson, over five years ago: _You gotta find something to keep fightin' for._ For a long time, that something had only been Joel. But over the past five years, I'd added a lot of somethings to my list of things to keep fighting for.

Sanjay and Max came over to shake my hand, and Tommy was standing right behind them. I felt a swell of affection for them. My team.

"Congratulations, Sheriff Ellie." Sanjay grinned. "You need a badge."

I flushed with pleasure. "I totally do. I'll have to work on that. And speaking of work..." I'd talked to Maria about this already, but I was nervous they'd turn me down. "I'm going to need some help with all this. I know you all have other jobs, and this would only be part-time, but Maria said it would be okay if you worked with me instead of doing regular duty shifts on the wall. I already owe you three big time, but I was wondering..."

Max interrupted me, excitement shining in her eyes. "Ellie, are you asking us to be your deputies?"

I grimaced. It sounded so lame, like something right out of one of those old westerns Joel liked so much. "Uh, yeah. I guess."

Sanjay pumped his fist in the air and said, "Deputy Sanjay? Fuck yeah! Do we get badges too?"

I grinned in relief. "I'll see what I can scrounge up." I looked at Tommy, who hadn't said anything yet. He was the one I was most worried about saying no, because he had a good thirty years on me. The rescue mission was one thing, but I wasn't sure he'd be interested in taking orders from me on a regular basis.

Tommy smiled at me. "As long as the boss-lady says it's okay," he nodded to where Maria was chatting with a group of people, "I'm your man."

Jesus, I couldn't stop grinning. My face was starting to hurt.

"Thanks, guys. Just...thanks. For everything." I hugged Sanjay and Max, and then Tommy wrapped his arms around me and picked me right up off the ground. "Hey! No manhandling the sheriff!" I laughed.

He set me down and kissed my forehead. "Yes, ma'am. You done good." He looked over his shoulder at the crowd gathered behind him, all wanting to talk to me. "Your public awaits."

I looked down at Joel apologetically. He was still sitting there, a look of satisfaction and pride on his face. "I should probably..." I indicated the people.

He smiled. "Scoot. I ain't goin' anywhere."

He gave my hand one last squeeze, and then I waded into the sea of people, smiling and shaking hands.

* * *

I was exhausted when we got back home. I wasn't used to talking to so many people at the same time, and it turns out it takes an enormous amount of concentration and energy to do it. It's a totally different kind of concentration and energy than you use when you're in a fight, too. I was going to have to ask Maria how she did it every day, because I was pooped.

I collapsed on the sofa in our living room and groaned. "I'm never moving from this spot. Send all the crimes here."

Joel lifted up my legs and sat down next to me, settling my feet onto his lap. He pulled off my shoes and socks and dug his thumbs into the arch of my right foot. I sighed in pleasure. "Oh, god. That feels so fucking good. You're hired. Just promise you'll never stop doing that."

"You gonna throw me in jail if I do?" He kissed the tip of my big toe.

"Shit. Jail." My brow wrinkled. "Do you think I need to build a jail? I mean, we've never really needed one, but more people are joining us every month, and there're bound to be times when..."

Joel gave my ankle a sharp nip, but he was laughing.

"What? What was that for?"

"For bringin' your work home with you. And for ruining a perfectly good foot massage." He laughed. "I cannot believe I'm shackin' up with the law."

I snorted. "Me, neither. And do you really think that foot massage was ruined? I don't want to have to arrest you." I wiggled my left foot at him until he laughed again and started working his knuckles into it.

"Oh, yeah. That's the stuff." I sighed in contentment and settled back against the sofa cushions. They smelled musty, but then again, they were older than I was.

I closed my eyes and was on the verge of drifting off when Joel said, "How's your finger?"

I opened my eyes and held up my left hand. Doc had complimented Tommy on his field dressing, and then had fixed me up with a splint that he wanted me to wear for another week. I moved my finger up and down from the base, feeling where it still twinged. It was a lot better, but not totally healed. "It's okay. Still hurts a little."

"I could kiss it. See if that helps," Joel said diffidently. He was looking down at my knees.

My stomach gave a little flip.

I won't lie, the past three weeks, things had been a little strange between us. When we'd gotten back from Michael's camp, we were both so injured and traumatized that sex had been the last thing on our minds, especially when we found out that three of our own, all friends I'd known from wall duty, had been killed during the skirmish at the dam. Those deaths had cast a pall over our victory in the mountains.

But the real strangeness stemmed from what I'd learned about Joel up there. Joel had always been so protective of himself, it was like he didn't know how to act around me now that he'd been laid totally bare before me. And for my part, it quickly got frustrating having to reassure him that I still loved him, despite what I'd learned. But I couldn't deny that the knowledge had brought our differences into sharp contrast. I was starting to realize that Joel was not, and maybe had never been, a selfless person. He lacked the openness and generosity of spirit that was one of Tommy's defining traits, and the decisions he made were usually, at heart, driven by that selfish need to protect himself emotionally. When he saved me from the Fireflies in Salt Lake City, it wasn't as much to save my life as it was to protect himself from the trauma of losing me. It was a subtle difference, but I understood it now like I never had before.

Not that I loved him any less, but it was like we were suddenly strangers, living in the same house. Everything that had been familiar and easy felt alien and difficult, and it was like we were having to learn each other's rhythms all over again, after all these years. Our sex life had been a definite casualty of all this, so when he offered to kiss my finger, my libido sat up and paid attention.

I shifted on the couch, curling my feet up under me so I could lean against his shoulder. I didn't look at his face, but I held out my splinted hand. "Here."

I couldn't feel his lips because of the splint, and the hungry beast inside me roared in disappointment. But I could feel his warm breath on my hand. "My wrist hurts too," I said. That was a lie. The ligature marks from Michael's zip ties were still visible, but they'd stopped hurting a while ago. I didn't regret my lie when I felt Joel's lips on the inside of my wrist, and when I felt the tip of his tongue tracing the mark there, I drew in my breath sharply through my nose.

He gently bit the fleshy pad at the base of my thumb before he lowered my hand and finally looked at my face. The uncertainty in his eyes made me want to cry. Uncertainty didn't suit Joel at all. Instead, I pointed to my neck and murmured, "This hurts too."

His eyes flared with relief, and he smiled and put his arm around me so I could lean into his chest. I stretched my neck out for him and he bent down to kiss it, swirling his tongue in tiny circles on my skin. I drew in a shuddering breath.

"That better?" His nose was almost touching mine, his face so close I couldn't even really see it.

"Mmm hmm," I breathed.

"Anywhere else hurt?" I could feel his pulse vibrating under my hands, his heart thudding in his chest.

I drew back so I could see his face and pointed to my lips. "Here."

His mouth curving in a small smile, he cupped the back of my head in one big hand and put his lips on mine. We touched the tips of our tongues together through mostly closed lips, each touch sending a surge of electricity through my body. I opened my mouth and deepened our kiss, and I almost shook when I felt his tongue slide past mine to explore my mouth. Oh, yes.

Like shedding an old skin, all the uncertainty and strangeness between us fell away and it was just him and me, just Ellie and Joel, and the only things that existed in the world were our bodies and our desire for one another.

I sighed through my nose when Joel tightened his grip on the back of my head, pressing his lips harder onto mine and thrusting his tongue deep into the back of my mouth. I fumbled with a button on his shirt, and then slipped my hand inside it, running my palm over the hard, furry planes of his chest and his small, sensitive nipples. He arched against me, never taking his lips from mine. I unbuttoned his shirt all the way so I could run my hand over his flat stomach and hard abdomen, and when I slipped the tips of my fingers past the waistband of his pants to brush the top of the crisp thatch of hair at his pubic bone, he gasped into my mouth. His erection was already a hard bulge against the zipper of his jeans.

Our kisses were becoming faster and more frantic, our tongues sparring back and forth in each other's mouths. Still kissing him, I twisted my body around and swung my leg over his waist, straddling him there on the couch. I finally pushed back from his mouth, one hand on his bare chest, so I could look in his eyes while I lowered myself down on him. The desire in his eyes was like a drug, and I couldn't look away. We both moaned when I settled down onto him, rolling our hips together. I could feel his rigid heat like a furnace between my legs, even through our clothes.

Joel raised the hem of my shirt to expose my belly, and I lifted my arms over my head so he could pull it off completely. He threw it across the room and buried his lips in my chest, leaving hot kisses on my collarbone, my sternum, the tops of my breasts where they swelled over my bra. I felt his fingers fumbling with the hooks of my bra behind my back, and then it, too, was sailing across the room and Joel was sucking my nipple into his mouth, and oh, fuck, it felt good. I arched up against his mouth and ground my hips down onto his. He switched to my other nipple and suckled it, hard, while I moaned and ran my fingers through his soft hair.

He kissed his way back up to my mouth and darted his tongue past my teeth. I nipped at it playfully, and he responded by sucking my lower lip into his mouth and gently biting down, until I pushed my tongue back into his mouth and pinched his nipple. I felt a thrill of power when I heard him moan. I loved being able to make him do that, and now I wanted to hear more. I pushed his shirt down over his shoulders, squeezing his hard biceps and reveling in the steely power of his arms, all mine to control.

I kissed the base of his neck and licked my way down the middle of his chest, to the trail of hair that disappeared into his jeans, and I slid down off his lap and onto the floor. Joel watched me with intent lust as I unbuttoned his pants and slid the zipper down, and he leaned back and raised his hips for me so I could pull his jeans and boxers down to his ankles. I stopped there, because I'd forgotten to unlace his boots first, and now I didn't want to take the time because his cock was right there in front of my face, standing straight up to attention, and I just wanted to taste it.

Joel moaned again when I wrapped my hand around his base. I didn't have the biggest hands, and his girth was large enough that I could barely wrap my fingers all the way around him. Seeing the contrast in our sizes was an incredible turn-on for me; it always reminded me of how much I had to stretch to accommodate him, which drove me wild.

First things first, I thought. Joel's gasp as I dragged my tongue up the underside of his cock from base to tip was all the incentive I needed to swirl my tongue around his head and then take him in my mouth.

"Oh, Christ. Ellie," he groaned as he pushed his hips forward. I inhaled the musky scent of his hair and started moving my head up and down his shaft. He was too big for me to take him completely in my mouth, so I kept my hand wrapped around his base and stroked him at the same time. When I cupped his balls gently in my other hand, he moaned again. God, I fucking loved hearing that.

I bobbed my head up and down on him, sucking his cock until my jaw was aching and he was breathing in short gasps and thrusting his hips up into my mouth. I felt his balls tightening up, just before his hands gripped my shoulders convulsively and his cock pulsed and shuddered in my mouth. "Ohhhhh, fuck...Ellie...oh, god..." he moaned as he came, filling my mouth with his hot, salty semen.

I swallowed every drop. I loved the taste of him, and I loved that I could make him cry out like that. It made me feel like fucking superwoman. I licked his cock clean and threw myself back up onto the couch next to him, feeling really fucking pleased with myself.

Joel was still panting, his head leaning back and his eyes closed, a big smile on his face. "Just let me catch my breath." He laughed and cracked his eyes open. "Holy fuck, Ellie. The things you do with that mouth of yours..."

I rubbed my jaw and smiled. It was sore, but it had been totally worth it. "You know how you can repay me?"

He gave me a sly smile. "I got some notion. You wanna shuck your jeans for me, Sheriff?"

A wave of desire pulsed through me at his words, and I stood up to take my pants off while Joel leaned down to remove his boots and the jeans that were tangled around his ankles. I was already anticpiating how his mouth would feel on my clit, but he surprised me. He shifted sideways on the couch and pulled me down between his open legs with my back to him, his cock soft and sticky against my buttocks. He ran one big hand over my belly and through the nest of curls to part the lips of my cunt, dipping a finger into me to feel my molten wetness.

"Mmmmm." He brought his hand up in front of my face. "Look how wet you are already, baby." He ran his glistening finger over my lower lip, and I eagerly sucked it into my mouth, licking my juices from him.

"Joel, please..." I was panting now, so turned on that I could feel my clit aching to be touched.

He dug his fingers into my shoulders, smoothing out the knotted muscles there. I made a sound of frustration in my throat. Really? I needed him to fucking touch me and make me come, and he was giving me a shoulder massage?

I felt him laugh, and then his voice came, a soft growl in my ear: "Good things come to those who wait." He reached down a pinched my nipple, and I moaned. And then his hands were back at my shoulders, on my neck, massaging my jaw. Every so often one would wander down to cup my breast or pinch a nipple again. I could feel my muscles uncoiling and relaxing even while the sexual tension inside me stretched tighter and tighter; there was a strange feeling of surrender to it. When Joel finally said, "Lie back on the couch for me, baby," I did it almost lazily, my head floating in a sea of heightened desire.

"Ahhhhhh." I sighed when his mouth touched my molten sex, a wave of pleasure rolling slowly over my body. He swirled slow circles around my clit with his tongue, his beard on my skin a ticklish counterpoint to the softness of his lips. My eyes flew open when he slipped two fingers into me and hooked them up toward my belly; he was touching something inside me that was almost as sensitive as my clit, but in a very different way.

"Oh, Joel..." I breathed, "That feels amazing. Don't stop doing that."

"Mmmmm." His mouth was still busy at my clit, but his affirmation vibrated through my body. I rolled my hips slowly as he stroked that new spot inside me, and the pressure building up inside me was like nothing I'd ever felt before.

Joel kept his movements steady and slow, and I didn't reach for it or try to force it, I just let it keep building until finally everything just crested with one long indrawn breath and a longer moan that I couldn't control. It felt like the top of my head was opening up, like every pore in my body was singing. My toes curled up and my thighs shook, and I vaguely realized that as I came, big gushes of liquid were squirting out of me with every pulse of my body.

As I lay there panting in the aftermath, growing more and more aware of the big wet spot on the couch under me, I said, "What...what the fuck was that?" My face started to burn. Had I relaxed so much that I'd just peed? What the hell just happened?"

"Holy shit." There was awe in Joel's voice. I craned my neck down to look at him, propped up on his elbows between my open legs, his beard and chest soaked with fluid. "I just made you squirt. You just squirted when you came." The smile on his face was so joyful it made him look like a little kid.

"That's...that's a thing?" I said weakly.

"I'd only ever seen it on the internet," he said, his voice almost reverent. "It ain't common. Jesus, fuck, Ellie, that was the sexiest thing I've ever seen." He climbed up and turned himself sideways to fit himself between me and the back of the couch, spooning me from behind. His cock was hard again, and he pressed it into my wet thighs, probing at the slippery folds of my cunt.

"Holy shit." I laughed. My body was still coming down off its endorphin high. "That was totally crazy. I don't even know how it happened. Do you think we'll be able to...ohhhhhhh." I cut myself off when Joel's probing cock finally slipped into my cunt and he pushed his hips forward to slide himself into me with one smooth movement.

He sank his teeth into my neck and fucked me with fast, long strokes, wrapping one hand around my breast and rubbing my clit with the other, and throwing himself into me with all the considerable strength in his body. "Ellie...Ellie..." His voice in my ear was a harsh, needy whisper.

"Fuck me, Joel. Ohhhhh, god. Yes! Don't stop...don't..." My cunt was stretched and full and his cock was pistoning into me. It didn't take long before his fingers on my clit brought another hard orgasm crashing down on me, and I moaned, my muscles pulsing around him. Joel came at almost the same time I did, moaning my name right in my ear while he spent himself inside me. I could feel him pulsing long after my orgasm ended.

Slowly, Joel loosened his death grip on my body, breathing hard into my shoulder. "Fuck," he muttered. "Sorry, baby. I didn't mean to...it snuck up on me when you came."

His cock was still inside me, softening, but not yet slipped out. I pushed myself back against him. "We're okay. And if you aplogize for coming, I _will_ arrest you."

He laughed and finally slipped out of me. "Okay." When I yawned, he said, "Let's get up to the bedroom. I won't be able to stand up if we spend the night on this damn couch."

I nodded in agreement and stood up, stumbling around the room to gather my discarded clothing. My thighs were sticky with the fluids dripping out of me when I finally noticed the huge spreading stain on the couch cushion. I stood there and stared at it in dismay, until Joel said, "What's wrong?"

"Honey," I said very seriously, "I think we're gonna need a new couch."

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Cover Me Up will continue in about a week with Winter (Part 1).


	10. Winter (Part 1)

**Warning:** This chapter contains depictions of graphic sex. If that's not what you're here for, please move along.

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**Winter (Part 1)**

The week before Christmas, we had the worst snowstorm of the year. It blizzarded for three days straight, and dumped almost four feet of snow on us. I had Joel and his crew string up ropes all over town so people didn't get lost and freeze to death going from their houses to the commissary or their outhouses, and I reduced the guards on the wall to a skeleton crew. No infected would be out in weather like this, and any people would have to be incredibly desperate. I didn't want any of my people freezing to death on the wall, and the temperatures were just brutally cold, so I made sure that every lookout tower was stocked with plenty of wood for the tiny woodstoves that were tucked into the corners of each elevated structure.

It had come as a total surprise to me that I enjoyed the organizational side of my new job so much; I'd always thought of myself as a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. But living with Joel all these years, some of his rigid pragmatism had apparently rubbed off on me. Managing resources was one of the things Joel did best, and that was basically what my job mostly came down to, other than the actual policing. And aside from the occasional drunken brawl that needed breaking up, there hadn't been too much on that side of things. I used Tommy and Sanjay both as managers on the wall, and sent them out to deal with any little fights, but Max was my angel of administration. Like Joel, she was a wizard with resource management, and between the two of us we did all of the duty scheduling, ammo and weapons inventory and distribution, resupply, and public gladhanding.

"Ugh." I glanced over to where Max was hunched over one of the three tiny desks Joel and I had shoehorned into a spare room of our house, my temporary office until something more permanent could be arranged. She was running her hand through her short, white-blonde hair in agitation.

"What's up?" I was happy to have an excuse to stop looking at ammo inventory. My eyes were starting to hurt, and not just from the paperwork. I'd been under the weather all week.

"Oh..." she made a noise of disgust. "I just fucking noticed that Maria has Aidan Jones scheduled for one of the snow clearing crews next week. Now I have to redo this entire goddamn duty roster. Fuck!" She balled up the paper she'd been working on and threw it emphatically across the room.

I stood up and retrieved the paper, smoothing it out on my desk. "Are you sure Maria meant Aidan Jones? And not Aidan Laughton or Aidan Naylor? Fuck, Aidan must have been a really popular name before the pandemic. We're gonna have to start giving them nicknames."

Max held out another sheet of paper towards me. "Nope. Look. Here's Maria's schedule. Aidan Jones on clearing. We can't use him on the wall."

"So slot one of the other Aidans in?" I suggested. My head ached.

"Not Aidan Naylor. She's exempt from duty until next month because of the baby. And Aidan Laughton is on the wall this week," Max said. She rubbed her face tiredly.

"Ugh."

"That's what I said."

I stared glumly at the litter of papers on both of our desks. All that fucking paperwork. I was starting to suspect that Maria had made me town sheriff simply because she'd gotten sick of the scheduling nightmare that wall postings posed. The full-time guard crew hadn't been a problem so far, but we still rotated a lot of irregulars through guard duty too. Which meant I had to know the schedule for every fucking person in town before I put together the duty roster every week, and I had to accommodate people whose primary jobs had to take precedence. I thought Arthur Chan at the dairy was going to have a fucking heart attack last week when I scheduled him for wall duty during the leadup to his calving season. It was just going to get worse during spring planting, when even the regulars needed to rotate out to work in the fields.

I stared at the wrinkled paper on my desk, my head aching, and said, "You know what? Fuck it. If we can't find one more person in this town to stand in for Aidan, I'll just take him off and post this as is, with one man short. We have enough people to cover all of the lookout posts, and I'll make sure to stock the odd-man-out with lots of batteries for his walkie."

Max glared at me suspiciously. "You wouldn't be thinking about filling in yourself, would you? Because that's what you did the last time this happened."

"No, of course not," I said.

I don't think I convinced Max, because she scowled and said, "Because the last thing you need to be doing is working double shifts, especially when you've been so sick."

My traitorous body chose that exact moment to double me up with a huge sneeze. "God damn it. Fucking cold. Or flu, or whatever," I grumbled. "I can't get rid of it. I've been puking my guts up all week. Why couldn't the viruses have died out with the rest of humanity?" I sniffed.

Max made a sympathetic noise in her throat. "Need a handkerchief?"

"Nah, I got one here somewhere." I dug through my pockets to find the square of green flannel, one of Joel's old shirts that I'd repurposed after it got too many holes for him to keep mending. I blew my nose into it and balled it up again in disgust. I was going to have to start carrying more handkerchiefs, at this rate.

"You know what?" Max said. "Why don't you call it a day. I can finish this by myself, and you should rest before the party tomorrow. Or call it off altogether."

"I can't do that. Joel's been planning it for like a month." I just wished I didn't feel like such shit. It felt like my fever was starting to come back, because I was chilled and nauseated. I hated to admit it, but a nap might be just what I needed. I was totally fatigued from this cold and from staring at numbers all morning. "You know, you're right. I'll make myself some tea and hit the hay. And maybe you can scrounge up something for yourself for lunch."

We wandered into the kitchen together to find Joel there, peeling a hard-boiled egg for his own lunch. His eyes lit up when he saw me. "Hey, baby doll. I was just gonna come check and see if you guys needed some food."

Oh no. The smell of the egg assaulted my nostrils even through my runny nose, and I bolted for the back door. I almost made it off the porch before I spewed up the oatmeal I'd eaten for breakfast. My stomach kept heaving long after there was nothing left to bring up.

"Ellie! Ellie, sweetheart! Are you okay?" The panicked concern in Joel's voice made me want to stand up and tell him that nothing was wrong, but I was kneeling in three inches of snow and I was shaking uncontrollably, too weak to stand up by myself.

"No..." I moaned. I scrabbled for a clean handful of snow with shaking hands and scrubbed my mouth out with it, and then Joel's arms were lifting me up and I was resting my cold cheek against his shoulder.

"Go get Doc," I heard him say to Max, his voice rumbling in his chest.

"No, I'm fine. I just need to sleep," I protested.

"You're not fine. And Doc is going to check you out," he said firmly.

"I feel like shit," I said, and my voice had a whine in it I could hear myself. I could feel that Joel was carrying me upstairs, to our bedroom.

"No kidding," he said. He'd been trying to get me to go see Doc for three days, and I'd been putting him off, assuming whatever I had would just go away on its own.

I leaned my forehead into his neck, letting the steady heat of his body calm my chills. He laid me gently down on our bed and tugged my soaked pants off, and then he piled every blanket we owned on top of me, tucking them snugly around me.

"No one's ever tucked me into bed before. Did you used to do this for Sarah?" I asked. My voice sounded far away, and I was starting to feel really weird and out of it.

Joel held the back of his hand to my forehead. "Christ. You're burning up." He kicked off his shoes and climbed under the covers with me, fully clothed, and gathered me to his chest. I pressed myself up against his furnace-like heat, shivering with chills.

"I'm f-f-fucking freezing..."

Joel kissed my forehead. "Shhh. Close your eyes and try to sleep. Doc will be here soon." He was worried. I could hear it in his voice. I wanted to reassure him, but I was too tired to talk any more. I closed my eyes and fell into a fitful sleep.

My dreams were chaotic and confusing. I was holding a flower, but when I raised it to my face to smell it, I could see that the center was infected with cordyceps. I tried to drop it, but the fungus had grown out of the stem and into my skin, and it was attached to my hand. And then Joel was there, holding a hatchet, and he said, "Don't worry, I won't let it kill you." He raised the hatchet and was about to bring it down on my wrist when I started awake again.

I was alone in the bed, but I could hear Joel's voice in the room, talking to Doc. My head was splitting, and at first I could only understand fragments of what they were saying.

"...long has she been..."

"Three days...been coming and..."

"...call me sooner?"

"...tried...stubborn..."

"You're stubborn," I muttered.

I felt the bedsprings move as Joel sat down next to me. "Hey, sweetheart. Can you sit up?" I moaned pitifully as he helped me. Every joint in my body was aching, and my eyeballs felt like hot stones in their sockets.

Joel was holding a mug of hot liquid to my lips. "Doc says you need to drink this. It'll bring your fever down."

I sipped dutifully and made a face. "Ugh. Bitter."

"It's willow bark tea, Ellie. It will help," Doc said.

I made another face, but gulped the rest of it down. Joel eased me back down onto the bed and kissed my cheek. "Sleep now, baby."

I closed my eyes and slipped back to sleep to the deep murmur of Joel's voice as he talked to Doc. This time I didn't dream.

I woke some time later, drenched in sweat.

Joel was dozing in a chair that he'd dragged upstairs and set next to the bed, and I watched him for a few moments before I moved. His beard was shot through with more silver than when I'd first met him, but otherwise he looked the same, although sleep always smoothed the deeper lines out of his careworn face and made him look years younger. He was fifty-four, but to me he was ageless, immortal. As if he felt me looking at him, his eyelids opened and I found myself staring into his deep brown eyes.

He rubbed blunt fingers over his face. "Hey. How you feelin'?"

I kicked the blankets off of myself. "Sweaty. And weak." My stomach growled. "And _hungry_."

Joel smiled with relief. "That's good. Means your fever broke. I'm not surprised you're hungry, you been sleepin' almost eighteen hours. Maybe now you'll be able to keep something down. Maria brought over some soup, you want to give that a try?"

Eighteen hours? Jesus. My stomach growled again as I levered myself upright on the bed. "Fuck, yes. Maria is a goddess."

I went to stand up, but Joel's hand on my shoulder pressed me back down onto the bed. "Just get yourself comfortable. I'll bring it up for you." He kissed me lightly on the lips and said, "I'm glad you're feelin' better." And with that, he headed downstairs.

It may have been kind of fucked up, but I really loved it when Joel took care of me like this, like I was still a child. Part of it was that I hadn't really had anyone to care for me when I actually was a child, but mostly it was because it was the clearest window I ever got onto who Joel was before the pandemic. When I needed caring for, he was gentle, devoted, and loving. I could see who he was before losing Sarah had hollowed him out, before he'd been forced to kill, and worse, to survive. It was the only time Joel was entirely selfless, and it always made me wonder where he'd be if he'd been allowed to live a normal life. Maybe Sarah would have gone to college and become a doctor or a lawyer or a fucking astronaut, for all I knew about what she liked. Maybe she'd have gotten married, and Joel would be a grandfather by now, with a pretty little house in the suburbs. Maybe he would have found a woman to love who understood his icy anger and his taciturn silences the same way I did. Maybe he wouldn't be angry or silent. Those thoughts cut me, though, because that man, the one Joel never got a chance to become, never would have fallen in love with a twenty-year-old girl.

Of course, to follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion, I wouldn't have even been conceived in a world without the pandemic, so if there was some cordyceps-free alternate universe out there where Joel played with his grandkids and invited Sarah and her husband over for Sunday dinner, I wouldn't be there to miss him.

No, I would keep my broken version of Joel, the one who kept the shards of his past so well-guarded that I only caught glimpses of them every once in a while. I was broken too, but our pieces fit together and made something that was strong and whole.

He reappeared in the doorway of our bedroom, holding a steaming bowl. I could smell the savory soup from where I'd arranged myself on the bed, and my stomach growled loudly; it had been days since I'd eaten a proper meal, and I was fucking starving. "Oh, man. That smells amazing."

"Chicken soup. My mom used to call it nature's best medicine." Joel smiled and handed me the bowl, and I dug in with pleasure, the rich salty broth exploding with flavor on my tongue. It was the best damn thing I'd ever tasted.

"Your mom used to make you chicken soup when you were sick?" This was one shard he'd never revealed to me. In all the years I'd known him, Joel had never mentioned his mother.

Joel sat down on the bed next to me, his eyes far away. "Yeah." He was quiet for a few moments, and then he added, "She died when Tommy was only two. I don't...I don't quite remember what she looked like, anymore." He gave his head a tiny shake, and then his eyes snapped to my face, closing the door on his mother. "How's that soup?"

"It's really fucking good." I took another big bite. The hot liquid felt like it was warming me from the inside out, from the pit of my stomach all the way down to my toes.

"Good. I thought maybe you'd want to wash up afterwards, so I've got some water on the stove. I'll get the tub ready for you."

To my chagrin, my eyes filled with tears. God, I loved him when he was like this, but I wasn't usually so damn emotional about it. I must be more tired than I thought. "Thanks," I said, trying to blink away the tears before he noticed them.

It was a useless exercise. Joel noticed everything.

"Hey, what is it?" he asked.

I shook my head, unable to speak past the lump in my throat for a moment. "I'm...I'm just really happy I have you," I said finally. It didn't even come close to expressing what I was actually feeling, but I think he understood.

His eyes crinkled in a smile, and he stretched himself out on the bed next to me while I finished my soup, just letting me lean into his body.

When I'd finished every drop of soup, he stood and took the bowl from me, saying, "I'm gonna go check on that water. I'll be back." Another kiss, and he was heading back downstairs.

Running water, hot or otherwise, was a thing of the past here in Jackson. The municipal water supply had failed years before we ever even got here, and with no expertise or equipment to fix or even find the failures, people had adjusted to collecting rainwater in big tanks for the summer months and melting snow in the winter for their water supply. We used outhouses instead of indoor toilets, which really fucking sucked when it was twenty degrees below zero. The bathtubs in most people's houses were way too big to spend the time filling with water, five gallons at a time, and our house was no exception. Our "tub" was a small metal watering trough that Joel had scavenged from a feed store, and it was barely big enough to sit down in with my knees bent. In the winter we'd fill it with snow every other morning and leave it near the woodstove to melt, and then at night we'd add boiling water before we washed up. The worst part was dragging it across the floor to the back door to empty it out when the water got too dirty, but Joel had attached locking wheels to it last summer, which made that particular chore much easier.

Joel appeared at the bedroom door again and bent over me to pick me up.

"I can walk, you know," I said, with some asperity.

"Lemme carry you." His voice was a deep rumble in his chest, and despite myself I leaned into him and let him pick me up. He held me close in his steel-strong arms and leaned his bearded cheek on the top of my head as he carefully made his way downstairs again.

I let him take care of me because he needed it as much as I did.

He set me down next to the woodstove in our living room, where the water in the tub steamed. "Lift up your arms," he said.

When I did, he pulled my shirt and sweater up over my head and threw it onto the couch. Wordlessly, his dextrous fingers went to the front clasp of my bra and popped it open with a practiced movement. He pushed the straps off my shoulders and tossed it over to the couch, to land on top of my sweater. I knew his gentle touches on my skin weren't meant to arouse, not right now, but I couldn't help shivering when his callused palms skimmed over my naked shoulders, and again when he knelt in front of me to pull my panties down my legs.

If he hadn't leaned forward and kissed the top of my thigh, where the crease of my leg met my abdomen, I would have thought he'd missed the effect his tender attentions were having on me. "Joel..." I gasped.

"Lift up your foot," he said, kneeling back on heels and looking up at me, a slow smile uncurling on his face. So. He was going to tease me. That was all right.

He stripped the sock off my right foot and stepped me out of my panties, and then he repeated the process on my left side. His touches on my legs became more than just accidental movements; his fingers caressed my calves, the backs of my knees, my thighs. I held on to his broad shoulders to steady myself, because my knees had started to shake. He leaned into me and kissed the thatch of curls between my legs, and I gasped again when I felt his tongue dart in to teasingly lick the sensitive bud at the top of my sex. He leaned back again onto his heels and said, in a soft, but commanding voice, "Now, get into the tub."

I obeyed. I held Joel's hand for balance and stepped into the hot water, bending my knees to sink down into the metal tub. Joel knelt beside the tub and dipped a soft rag into the water. "I got a surprise for you," he said.

I looked down at his hands. He was rubbing the rag onto a bar, and his hands were covered in thick lather. "Soap!" I exclaimed, laughing as the slippery bar shot out of his hands. "Where did you get it?" It smelled wonderful, like honey.

He smiled and fished the bar out of the tub. "Yeah. Christina's started making it, with goat's milk and honey. I know you don't like that lye soap we use for laundry. It's your birthday present." He started rubbing the soapy rag over my back.

I sighed and leaned back into his hand. "That feels great." Joel's last sentence penetrated the pleasant fog in my brain. Earlier he'd said I'd slept for eighteen hours, and that meant... "Oh, fuck. It's my birthday. I fucked up the party. I'm so sorry, Joel!"

He kissed the top of my head. "The party's just been postponed. Doesn't have to be on your actual birthday. We're having it in a couple days. And if you apologize for getting sick I may just have to give you a birthday spanking."

Oh, man. Joel's tone had been light, but it still made my breath catch in my throat. By mutual unspoken agreement, we hadn't been too rough with each other since our ordeal with Michael. Actually being tortured pretty much took the fun out of rough sex play, and we'd been nothing but gentle with each other ever since. But Joel's words made my whole body tingle, and the thought of his palm cracking on my ass made me squirm right there in the tub.

Joel didn't seem to notice. I felt his fingers at the base of my neck, digging into my ponytail and pulling my hair tie out. "Lean your head back." He put one hand on my forehead while he used a pitcher to pour warm water over my hair, and then he rubbed the bar of soap onto my scalp, massaging suds through my lank and sweaty locks. It felt wonderful. I didn't speak while he rinsed my hair out and then picked up my arms to run the soapy rag up each one, scrubbing at the soft red hair under my armpits. My breathing quickened as he moved the cloth in slippery circles over my breasts, but Joel didn't stop his steady movements or even look up at me.

"Stand up now, Ellie." Joel's voice, so close to my ear, vibrated deep in my chest and sent a wave of desire through my body that left me feeling even weaker than my fever had. I wasn't sure I _could_ stand up, but Joel was there to help me.

As I swayed unsteadily on my feet, I balanced my palm against his chest and I noticed that his shirt was soaked in patches from my bathwater. "You're getting all wet," I breathed.

Without a word, he pulled the snap-button shirt open and shrugged it off. I ran my shaking hands over his broad pectoral muscles, my fingers brushing the crisp graying hair that furred his torso. I could feel his heart thudding under my fingertips, and when I looked into his eyes, the gentle protectiveness there had acquired a hard edge of need.

I felt it too. I needed to feel his hands on me, his hardness inside me. His rough fingers were clutching my shoulders, holding me in place and slightly apart from him, and he said, almost to himself, "You've been so sick..."

Anger flared in my chest. He was trying to talk himself out of having sex with me! Well, that just wasn't going to happen. I didn't care how sick I'd been, or how weak I felt. I wanted him to be rough with me. I wanted him to use his strength and press me down on carpet and fuck me until I couldn't move. I reached out and cupped him, squeezing the hard, hot bulge through his jeans, and his fingers convulsed on my shoulders hard enough to leave marks. I leaned forward and put my lips against his neck, where his pulse hammered like a drum, and took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to tell him what I needed. "Joel," I murmured, "I'm really, really, sorry I got sick and ruined the party." _Stop thinking. Hear what I'm saying and fuck me. I need you,_ I thought desperately.

Joel lips urgently sought mine, and I didn't feel bad for even a second about using my own need to break through his objections. He forced his tongue through my lips and deep into my mouth, pressing our lips together so hard I tasted blood. His tongue claimed me, and I surrendered to it as his hard arms wrapped around me and picked me up out of the tub, dripping soapy water everywhere.

When Joel tore his lips from mine, I gasped.

"I told you what would happen if you apologized for getting sick again." His voice was a deep growl in my ear, and I shivered.

"You did." My voice was shaking.

He didn't carry me far, just to the thick rug we'd laid down next to the woodstove. He set me on my feet and kissed me again, his lips hard and demanding, and then he pressed a towel into my hands and stepped back. "Dry yourself off."

He was going to watch me. I took a deep breath to steady my hands, and rubbed the towel over my skin, never taking my eyes from his, which were burning with possessive lust. I patted my wet hair and dried every inch of my skin before I finally moved the towel slowly down my belly and onto the thatch of dark red curls between my legs, panting as I rubbed myself with it. Joel tore the towel from my grasp and clutched my wrist in a bruising grip as I let out a sobbing gasp of frustration. "No," he said. "You don't get to touch yourself yet."

"Damn it.." He cut me off by crashing his lips down on mine again, his tongue thrusting into my mouth and leaving me breathless. I bit his lower lip hard, for spite, tasting blood again as his grip on my shoulders tightened painfully, almost grinding my bones together. He held me out at arm's length again and slowly uncurled his fingers from where they were digging into the soft flesh of my upper arms. When I looked down, I saw the marks of his fingers, bright red against my white skin. I drew in another shaking breath.

"Get down on your hands and knees." His voice was hoarse with desire.

The pit of my stomach trembled with lust. I turned around and sank to my knees on the soft rug, then leaned forward and placed my palms flat on the ground. I heard him moving behind me, but when I craned my neck around he said, "Keep your eyes on the floor."

I had enough time to think,_ Jesus, this is fucked up in so many ways. I fight him when he tells me to do anything, so why do I get off on it so much when he tells me what to do during sex?_

And then Joel's open palm smacked against my ass with a loud, satisfying crack. I gasped and stopped thinking at all, because all I could concentrate on was when the next blow was going to come. Joel varied his spanks from gentle slaps that made me squirm back up against his hand to hard, stinging smacks, delivered with almost the full strength of his arm, that made me cry out and cringe away from him. After each of these hard smacks, he would rub the heated flesh of my ass and then slide his fingers into the slick heat between my legs, rubbing the tiny sensitive nub of my clit until I pushed back up against him again. And then he'd tear his hands away and spank me again. I was almost sobbing with frustration when I finally heard the soft click of his zipper and the grunt of relief that meant he'd freed his bulging erection from the confinement of his pants.

I felt his breath on the overheated skin of my ass, just before his tongue dove into my dripping sex and I moaned his name out loud. He devoured my pussy, manipulating my clit with two fingers, as I lowered my forehead to the rug and pressed my hips back up against his mouth, gasping and mewling into the floor. I was too far gone to form a single coherent word. My ass cheeks burned from the spanking, and Joel's beard scratched my sensitive skin; each sensation only heightened the pleasure building from the pit of my groin and filling my body. When I came, it was with a guttural moan that climbed up from my stomach through my throat and ended as a high-pitched scream.

Joel wasn't done with me yet. He gave me a few seconds to catch my breath, and then he said, "Ellie."

"Yes." My voice was so high I barely recognized it as my own.

"I'm going to fuck you now."

"Yes. Ohhhhhhhhh..." I moaned as I felt the tip of his cock spreading the elastic ring of muscle at the entrance of my cunt. His hands gripped my hips, and he grunted as he pulled me back against him, burying the whole burning length of himself in me in one thrust. I cried out.

"Jesus. Jesus." Joel was shaking against me. "Why are you so fucking tight?" he whispered. He withdrew almost all the way, and then slammed his hips into me again.

I pushed back against him, needing to feel him even deeper inside me. "More," I moaned.

"You want more?" he panted, withdrawing and thrusting himself into me again. "You're a greedy girl, aren't you?"

"Yessss," I hissed, as he bottomed out in me again. "More, please, more, Joel..." I didn't even know what I was asking him for, it was like my mouth wasn't attached to my brain any more.

His cock buried in my cunt, he leaned his body over my bent back. I could feel his blood pounding against my back and inside me, and he was sucking in air in giant gasps, trying to control himself. "When I start fucking you, you're gonna reach down and rub your clit. I want you to feel me moving inside you. You're gonna come again for me." He said it like it was already an accomplished fact.

I nodded, unable to speak. He bit my shoulderblade lightly and straightened up again. I rested my head on my left hand and reached down to touch my swollen clit with my right. Once Joel felt I was positioned, he gripped my hips to keep me in place and started fucking me hard. As I frantically rubbed my clit, I could feel the rigid length of his cock moving and bulging under my skin. I moaned louder and louder as he pounded into me, and when he slowed his rhythm and pressed the tip of one wet finger against my tightly puckered anus, I pushed back against him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Ohhhhh, fuck. Oh, god, Joel..." I felt filled up, split open. My anus was clenching around his finger, and my cunt was clenching around his cock, and my hand was rubbing my clit so hard it was starting to cramp up. He moved in me again, more slowly, and I held my breath while the pleasure inside me crested into an explosion that left me weeping and swearing into my hand while my cunt muscles cramped and squeezed around Joel's hard shaft. He held himself perfectly still, his breath coming in harsh gasps. Slowly, as I panted beneath him, he withdrew his finger from my ass. I squeezed his cock with my muscles one more time.

"Oh, fuck," he moaned. I felt his cock twitch once before he tore himself out of me. His hot semen splashed on my ass cheeks, dripping down onto the rug below me. "That was a close one," he panted.

My knees gave way and I fell to my side on the rug, and Joel collapsed next to me a second later.

"Holy shit." I grinned like an idiot. "That was...that was pretty good."

"Pretty good?" Joel leaned on one elbow and glared at me, but his smile ruined the effect. He poked me in the ribs until I giggled. "Pretty good?"

"Ah. Hee hee hee...quit it! Ha ha...ow! Okay, okay!" I snorted. "It was really good. No! Don't!" I shrieked as Joel pounced on me and got to tickling in earnest, until I was howling with so much laughter I couldn't catch my breath.

"Tell me again." He was grinning and poised to tickle me again. "Tell me how that was pretty good."

I laughed. "Oh, fine. Considering I don't think I can walk right now, I'd say that was pretty fucking good. Noooooooo!" He pounced on me again, his blunt fingers poking into my ribs and making me squirm.

Joel covered my laughing mouth with his, and then things got a little less funny and a little more physical. When I was lying on my back with him on top of me, my legs wrapped around his waist, and we were rolling our hips together in slow motion, he whispered in my ear, "What do you have to say for yourself now?"

I gazed into his eyes and held them. "I'd say you have pretty amazing stamina for a guy who's like, almost a hundred."

He laughed out loud, and I could feel it all the way through my body. "Jesus, Ellie. I'm startin' to think you need another spanking."

"Later," I breathed, rolling my hips under him again.

There was no more talking after that; Joel moved in me slowly and steadily until I had one more marvelous, slow-build orgasm that made my toes curl right up, and then he rolled off of me and stroked himself to another orgasm while I rubbed his nipples and gazed into his eyes. Watching his face while he came was one of the sexiest things I'd ever seen.

I lay on my side on the rug, feeling like I was melting into a puddle and soaking up the heat from the woodstove in front of me and Joel's body behind me until he staggered to his feet and muttered something about putting more water on to heat the bath. I guess we probably both needed to wash up after that.

I sighed, feeling contentment oozing from every pore in my body, and then levered myself to my feet and stepped into the lukewarm tub, splashing water onto my soaked crotch. I didn't want to wait for the water to heat up._ I should probably rinse myself out really well, just in case Joel accidentally did come inside me that second time, I thought. Gotta be careful because my last cycle was…_

I counted back in my mind. And then I counted again. I froze with the soapy rag still in my hand as icy panic gripped my throat.

My last cycle was the week after we'd escaped from Michael's camp.

That was eight weeks ago. _Eight_ weeks. I'd been so caught up in my new job I hadn't even noticed I was...no. I couldn't be.

But that night of the town meeting, the night I was made sheriff, Joel had come inside me, and I had told him we were okay. Because I fucking counted wrong. The weeks after Michael had been a blur and I'd fucking counted wrong. Oh shit, oh shit.

I could smell the bar of honey-scented soap without even raising it to my nose. I had gotten sick to my stomach yesterday as soon as I smelled Joel's hard-boiled egg.

All the puking, and the smells, and the fucking fatigue, and the overly emotional responses to everyday things…

Oh, my god. Oh, god.

I looked down at my flat belly and lay one hand across it, as if I could feel what was going on inside me that way.

What the fuck was I going to do?

How the fuck was I going to tell Joel?

* * *

Cover Me Up will continue with Winter (Part 2).


	11. Winter (Part 2)

**Winter (Part 2)**

The day of my party, Joel got up in the early morning hours to dig out the smoker in the back yard. It was a big metal monstrosity that he and Tommy had lovingly crafted over the summer from an old oil drum and metal pipes for the legs and chimney, and when Maria had found out they'd used precious fuel to run the oxy/acetylene welding torch making a backyard barbecue, she'd threatened to shoot Joel and divorce Tommy. I don't think poor Tommy got laid for weeks after that.

After he shoveled the smoker out of the snow, Joel filled the firebox with a layer of paper and small chunks of wood and lit it up. I could see the satisfaction on his face when the fire caught from where I sat inside, all warm and cozy, drinking chicory coffee and munching a slice of buttered bread while he froze his fool ass off in the backyard. Let me be perfectly clear: Joel was the one who had insisted on making an authentic Texas barbecue feast for my birthday, which was the week before Christmas. In fucking Wyoming. It was now the week after Christmas, but it was still fucking Wyoming. I didn't feel sorry for his stupid ass at all.

All right, I felt a little sorry. He looked really cold.

When he came back inside, stamping his feet and blowing air through his lips, I ran over to kiss his cold nose. It was the least I could do, since I'd refused to help shovel the smoker out of the four feet of snow in the backyard. He smiled and gave me a real kiss, warming his cold lips on mine and folding me in his arms. That was when I felt the freezing handful of snow slithering down the back of my flannel pajama top.

I screamed and pushed him away from me, shaking the snow out of my shirt where it fell with a wet plop onto the floor. Joel was doubled over with laughter.

"You...you..." I was speechless. "You...bag of dicks!" I finally managed.

That just made him laugh harder. "Where...where the fuck did you hear that?" he wheezed. "Bag of dicks..." He threw himself into one of our kitchen chairs and laughed helplessly until tears ran down his face.

"All right, all right," I grumbled. "You don't have to be an asshat about it." I couldn't suppress a smile as my new epithet made Joel convulse with laughter again. It turns out, once you got Burt down at the stables talking about something other than 80s music, he was a treasure trove of imaginative pre-pandemic pseudo-profanity. I was saving my favorite new expression, "cockmuncher," for a special occasion.

Joel stood up again and pulled off his jacket, still snorting with laughter. He reeled me in for a hug, kissing the top of my head, and said, "Oh, baby. You are a treasure."

I smiled against his chest, and said, "You're kind of a jerk, but I'm keeping you anyway."

"Much obliged, ma'am," he said, in the thickest drawl he could manage, drawing the last word out into three syllables. I rolled my eyes at him. He grinned and dropped back into his normal speech pattern. "You save any of that coffee for me?"

"There's a whole pot on the stove," I said.

"You really are a treasure." He gave me one last squeeze and turned away, heading to the stove.

I almost told him right then.

Almost. He was in such a good mood, that might make him take the news a little better.

_What news? I don't know anything for sure,_ I thought. _I haven't thrown up since that day with the egg. Maybe I still feel sick to my stomach sometimes, and sure, things smell weirder than usual, and I haven't had my period for nine weeks, but that may just be because I'm stressed out. There's no point upsetting Joel over nothing._

But I knew it wasn't nothing. I knew. My whole body felt different, even though my stomach was as flat as it ever was.

I forced the anxiety out of my face before Joel could turn around and see it. I was getting better at hiding my thoughts; maybe I should try my hand at poker again.

The truth was, every time I thought about what was happening inside me, I practically shit myself in terror. What would my infection do to a baby? Would it be normal, or would I give birth to some kind of hybrid fungus monster? Would it turn and try to eat me from the inside out? And even if nothing like that went wrong, how would Joel feel about becoming a dad again, at his age? I probably should go to the clinic and just get rid of it now.

But every time I thought that, a cold little voice in my head would remind me that Joel was thirty-three years older than me and he wouldn't be around forever, and wouldn't having his child, having some little part of him continue, help make up for that inevitable loss in some small way? I really wished I could shoot that voice. I didn't even want to think of a future without Joel.

_Fucking stupid emotions._ I felt my eyes filling with tears again, just as Joel turned back around from the stove with his coffee. I spun around and walked back to my breakfast before he could see my face, and by the time he sat down next to me at the table, I had surreptitiously wiped my eyes on my sleeve and was ready to greet him with a smile again.

He sat down next to me and slathered butter on a slice of Christina's whole-wheat sourdough bread. "Baby, I cannot wait for you to try this brisket. It's gonna be worth all the tradin' we had to do to get it. I hope that pepper is still good." He cast a worried eye over to the counter, where the two ten-pound cuts of meat rested next to the salt-and-pepper rub he'd mixed up. The salt hadn't been a problem; we had enough bags of rock salt from the city's old municipal road supply warehouse to last us for years, but pepper was pretty hard to find these days, and people hoarded it like it was gold. Joel and Sanjay had gone on a scavenging run outside the walls a few weeks ago, before the snow really started in earnest, and had scored a couple jars of whole peppercorns from one of those fancy gourmet cooking shops.

I had been furious when I found out, because they'd gone without telling me, and they'd come back covered in blood from a run-in with a pack of clickers.

Joel's weak protest that he hadn't told me because it was part of a surprise for my birthday did absolutely nothing to mollify me, and it was only after he reminded me that Sanjay was a better shot than I was that I grudgingly forgave him. But not before making him promise me that he would never go outside without at least telling me first. I had no intention of letting him go outside the city walls without me, ever.

I shoved all my worries into a compartment in the deepest corner of my mind and slammed the door closed. _Not right now._ I smiled at Joel, and said, "You're pretty adorable about this whole barbecue thing. It's just cooked meat, Joel."

He looked mortally offended. "I'm gonna pretend you never said that. Barbecue is serious business, Ellie. It ain't just cooked meat...it's meat cooked for hours, over indirect heat with smoke, until it's got a red smoke ring around the outside and it's fallin' apart on the inside. When it's perfect, it's the best goddamn thing you ever tasted." Joel's eyes were closed, and the smile on his face told me he was remembering barbecues past.

"I still don't get what the big deal is," I said.

He opened his eyes and looked at me. "Oh, you will, baby. There was a little town out southeast of Austin that called itself the barbecue capital of Texas. Tommy and I went there once and went to every barbecue joint in town, eight or nine places, just to sample the brisket from each one." He laughed. "I thought I was gonna pop at the end there. They all had these big firepits with huge metal covers, and they cooked hundreds of pounds of meat every day, but none of 'em were as good as the brisket our dad made in a smoker just like that one back there." He gestured proudly to the back door.

"So it was the smoker that made your dad's barbecue so good?" I asked carefully. Joel's dad was a touchy subject, and he didn't mention the man often.

"Yeah, maybe." Joel's smile faded a little. "Either that, or all the beer he'd drink while he was waitin' for it to cook somehow seeped into the meat by osmosis," he added with a wry bitterness that twisted at my heart.

I now knew three things about Joel and Tommy's father, up from the two things I'd learned in the past six years: he was a drunk, he'd regularly beaten his sons, and he made good barbecue. "So, he taught you something good," I said.

Joel looked at me with surprise. "Yeah." He rubbed his hand over his beard like he always did when he was having an uncomfortable thought. Ha! I was starting to read him just as well as he could read me. "I guess he did."

Man, I was going to be great at this mothering thing.

* * *

By the time people started arriving for the party later that afternoon, I was starting to understand Joel's point about the barbecue. The scent of cooking meat and smoke wafted into the house every time Joel opened the back door, and it smelled so good it was making me salivate.

Maria and I wandered out to the yard where Joel and Tommy were standing with their shoulders hunched against the cold, bottles of Maurice's dark beer in their gloved fists, discussing the finer points of barbecue.

Oh, man. That smoke smelled good. I could hear the meat sizzling inside the smoker. I just wanted to get a little peek, but when I reached out for the wooden handle they'd affixed to the top half of the drum, Joel smacked my hand away.

"Do _not_ touch the smoker, woman," he growled.

"Jeez, Joel. Lay the fuck off." I turned to Maria and said, "What is it about meat and fire that brings out the fucking caveman in a guy?"

Joel grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles apologetically. "Sorry, baby. It's almost done. Another half hour, tops. But if you let all the heat out now..."

"All right, all right," I grumbled. "You guys do realize it's fucking freezing out here, right? You could have this conversation inside."

Tommy grinned. "Yeah, but then we wouldn't be breathing in the heavenly meat smoke." He took a deep breath. "Ahhhhhh. Fuck, that takes me back."

Joel smiled at him, and said, "Yeah." He looked at the smoker with a satisfied grin. "I'm glad we did this, little brother."

"Me, too," said Tommy.

Maria rolled her eyes at me. "I think these two need a moment alone with their smoker. Can we go back inside, where it's warm?"

"Absolutely," I said.

Max was just letting Doc in the front door when I came back in, and my heart beat faster when I saw him. Why didn't I think of it before? I could talk to Doc about my suspicions, and he could tell me I was just being paranoid, and then I could totally enjoy my party. "Hey, Doc!"

"Ellie! Happy birthday. I'm glad you're feeling better than the last time I was here." He gave me an avuncular smile.

I grabbed him by the elbow. "Yeah, much better. Let me show you where we're putting coats and stuff." I dragged him off to the office and shut the door behind us, standing in front of it so he couldn't get out of the room.

Doc looked at me, a perplexed smile on his face. "Something on your mind?"

"I, uh, well...when I was throwing up last week...it was only when I smelled certain things. And my period is late, so...ha ha, you'll think this is so stupid, but I had this thought..." I was rambling. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and said, "IthinkImightbepregnant." It came out as one long word.

I cracked one eye open to see Doc looking at me, his lips curved into a sad half-smile beneath his neat, white mustache.

My stomach felt like it was made of ice, and I realized that Doc wasn't going to tell me I was just imagining things. "You knew," I hissed. "You fucking knew!"

"Now, Ellie," he said, "I certainly didn't know. But I admit...I suspected. There's been a mild cold virus going around this year, but nothing with symptoms that presented like yours. In a community this small, it's almost impossible for a virus to attack just one person like that. Morning sickness is generally not accompanied by a fever, but given your rather...unique biology, I didn't want to discount the notion. And you and Joel obviously enjoy a...ah..._healthy_ relationship. When was your last cycle?"

"Nine weeks ago," I whispered. There seemed to be a lump in my throat. Now that I'd said it out loud, and Doc had agreed with me, it all felt too shockingly real.

"So you'd be about seven weeks along, now." He took a small notepad from his pocket and made a note with a stub of a pencil. "What other symptoms have you experienced?"

"Um, I'm tired all the time. And I cry at the drop of a hat. And I haven't thrown up again, but some smells make me sick to my stomach. But all that could just be stress, right?" I asked hopefully. "Don't you have a test you could do to make sure?"

"The only certain pregnancy test in this day and age is time, Ellie. I don't have the chemicals for a blood test, and those home pregnancy tests all expired years ago. However, given your symptoms together with your missed cycle..." His voice was gentle. "It would be my best professional guess that you are pregnant. Wouldn't you say so?"

My last hope disappeared. I couldn't fool myself any more, this was actually happening. "Uh huh." To my horror and Doc's embarrassment, I started to cry. "I don't know what to do!"

Doc sighed and reached past me to lock the door, then he steered me into one of the desk chairs and pulled up another to sit opposite me. Wordlessly, he offered me a white handkerchief, which I took and used to mop my streaming face.

"Does Joel know yet?" He asked gently.

"No!" I gave a watery laugh. "Are you kidding?"

Doc reached out and took my hand in his. "Ellie. I probably don't need to tell you that because of your condition, your pregnancy will be completely uncharted territory. We don't know if the fetus will be viable, or what kind of risks you might be taking if you decide to try and carry it to term."

I cried harder. "I might have a clicker baby."

"Given the pathology of the CBI, I think that's highly unlikely." Doc chuckled, and I felt an unreasonable stab of hatred. He had no fucking idea what I was going through.

He ducked his head when I glared at him. "Sorry. I thought you were joking. I won't say your concerns aren't valid, because the truth is, we have absolutely no idea what will happen. This could be a totally normal pregnancy, or it could kill you. There is no way to predict it." He was quiet for a long moment. "Just so you know what choices you have available to you, I have some abortifacients back at the clinic, but their efficacy decreases past the eighth week of pregnancy. And I'm really not equipped to perform a surgical abortion."

I dropped my head into my hands. A week. I had a week to decide whether or not to keep a pregnancy that might or might not end disastrously, if not kill me outright, and in any case would definitely fuck up my relationship with Joel.

Doc squeezed my shoulder. "Don't wait too long to make up your mind."

I shook off his hand. "Yeah, I got the message, Doc." I sighed. "Sorry. This all has me a little bit on edge."

He smiled sadly. "I understand. You're not the first woman here in Jackson to be faced with this decision, as unique as your circumstances are. Pregnancy and childbirth is hard on a woman, especially with our rudimentary medical resources. But if you do decide to continue on with it," he reached out and squeezed my hand, "I just want you to know that I'll support you every step of the way, and I'll give you the best prenatal care I can. You don't have to go through this alone."

"Thanks, Doc." I wiped my face one more time and looked up into his kind blue eyes. "Can you tell I've been crying?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "Ah…"

I sighed again. I wasn't a stealthy crier. When I really got going, my stupid pale skin got all red and blotchy. Not to mention the puffy eyes.

"Tell you what," he said. "You stay here, and I'll bring you some water."

I nodded, and he unlocked the door and slipped out into the hallway.

The door opened again a minute later, and I raised my head and said "That was fas—"

Maria was standing in the doorway. She quickly came in and closed the door, and said, "What the fuck is going on?"

I panicked, and reacted badly. "Fuck, Maria! Why do you have to be so goddamn nosy?"

She narrowed her eyes at me. "You fucking ditched me as soon as Doc walked in the door. Now I want to know why my friend is sitting in her office, crying her fucking eyes out, instead of enjoying her own fucking birthday party."

"God damn it, Maria…" I was tempted. I was so tempted to tell her. But I knew if I told anyone else before I told Joel, he would really never forgive me. "It's...I'm...I just..." I groped for something that would explain everything, but my mind was drawing a blank. I looked down at the desk, where my badge lay, a simple silver star pin that Joel had commissioned from Burt. It wasn't pretty—Burt's forge expertise ran more to horseshoes than jewelry—but it was a symbol of what I stood for. I protected the town. And I realized that I had to tell Maria, because the changes I would be going through could potentially put people here at risk.

I swallowed hard, and then said, "I'm pregnant." It was getting a little easier to say.

Maria's eyes widened, and she groped for a chair. "Fuck."

"Yeah."

"You're not thinking of keeping it, are you?" Her eyes were bright and hard. Leader-of-fucking-Jackson eyes.

I suppressed a flare of anger. She was just doing her job. "I haven't decided yet. But Maria..." I looked pleadingly at her, willing her to understand, "It's Joel's." I realized that my hand was pressed protectively against my abdomen.

Doc came back into the room at that moment, and stopped when he saw Maria. He eyed us warily until I said, "It's all right, I just told her."

He nodded, and handed me the glass of water he was carrying. "That was going to be my next suggestion."

Maria stood up, all business, and said to Doc, "If she keeps it, I want to be in the loop on everything. You'll test her every day for infection levels, and you'll bring every test result straight to me. Confidentiality doesn't apply here. I need to know if she's going to become a threat to my people." Her words hurt; they put me on the outside looking in again. Then the hardness faded from her face and she rounded on me, taking me by the shoulders, her blue eyes filled with fear. "Ellie, please. Please don't do this. You have no idea what could happen! So many things can go wrong during a pregnancy, and with your infection, what if it kills you? Or worse, what if you carry it to term, and then we have to kill the baby because it's infected? What will you do if that happens?"

"I know. I'm fucking petrified, Maria. But...what if everything turns out all right? What if the baby has my immunity? How can I give up that chance?"

She pushed away from me angrily. "That's a big fucking chance. You do realize that if this pregnancy kills you, Joel will blame himself, right?"

I flinched from her words as if they were a blow. I hadn't considered that. If I died while trying to carry his child, it would kill Joel.

"Ellie," Maria's lips compressed into a thin line and she blew air through her nose in a long, angry exhale. "I won't take the decision away from you; I don't want to live in that kind of world. But think carefully. I can't afford to lose you or Joel." Then the anger drained from her face, to be replaced by anxiety. "And I'm really fucking worried about this."

I hugged her. "Me, too." Maria was stiff in my arms for a second, and then she put her arms around me and hugged me fiercely.

When we finally returned to the party, my face was back to its usual freckled pastiness, and my eyes were only a little red. Most everybody had arrived by then, so I made the rounds and tried not to let the crushing weight of my indecision show on my face. _Compartmentalize, Ellie,_ I told myself severely. _Just shove all of that into a box to think about later. Get a fucking lid on it, before Joel sees you._

He and Tommy were still outside with the smoker, but there was some activity at last: they had the top open and through the back window I could see Joel testing the doneness of the meat with the pad of his thumb. By the grin splitting his face, it was finally ready. He carefully lifted the big chunks of meat onto a plate and closed the smoker lid, and then they headed inside.

When the smell of that brisket hit my nose, I thought I might have died and gone to heaven. The whole thing had a dark brown, almost black, crust on it, and it smelled half-wild, like fire and wood and slightly burnt flesh. It was a primal smell, one you recognized on almost a genetic level, a common thread that stretched back thousands of years to the humans who first used fire to cook their dinner. It smelled really fucking good, it what I'm trying to say.

I met Joel at the back door and trailed him into the kitchen, saying, "Do I get the first piece? It's my birthday party, after all."

"It has to rest for a few minutes, but I promise you the first piece," Joel said.

My stomach growled so loudly that everyone around me could hear it.

He laughed. "Ten more minutes, I promise. Here, help me get all the rest of the stuff ready."

I sliced bread and cheese while Joel cut up a couple of onions and opened a jar of homemade sweet pickles. We'd borrowed a stack of plates from the commissary, and I set them out on the table, along with a handful of forks and knives. Sanjay had brought a big bowl of potato salad, and Maria had dessert covered, with an actual layer cake.

"Ellie, come here!" Joel's excited voice called me back into the crowded kitchen, where he had finally started cutting the meat into thin slices. "First bite." He was holding a little chunk of brisket in his fingers, and he popped it in my mouth.

The smoky, meaty flavor exploded on my tongue. The fat on top of the cut of meat had gotten all crispy and melted right down into it, infusing the meat with a flavor and unctuous consistency that was unlike anything I'd ever tasted. I wanted to tell everyone to go home right then and eat all of it myself. But when I opened my eyes and saw Joel's anxious expression, I couldn't help messing with him.

"It's...it's, um..." I pretended to be reluctant, groping for words. "It's a little..."

"What? What's wrong? Is it too dry?" he demanded. "Damn it..."

I started to laugh. "I'm just fucking with you, Joel." The look on his face, a perfect mixture of affront and mortification that I'd managed to pull one over on him, made me laugh even harder. "It's the best thing I've ever put in my mouth."

"Dude. Burn," Sanjay said. "I think she just insulted your dick, man." Everyone in the kitchen laughed when I flushed red with embarrassment.

Joel growled and wrapped his arms around me. "Now who's the bag of dicks?" he said in my ear, but he was laughing too. "You should never tease a Texan about his barbecue, Ellie."

The brisket was a huge success. Even Maria grudgingly admitted that the smoker was a magical box and told Joel that he no longer owed her a canister of oxy/acetylene fuel, as long as he came up with something to make barbecue on a grand scale so the whole community could enjoy it. She and Joel and Tommy started sketching out plans for a brick firepit that they could build out behind the commissary while I caught up with Pete, who had brought Christina, of all people. Christina took nursing shifts at the clinic when Doc had long-term patients, and it turns out that sparks had flown between them when Pete was recovering from his wounds in the fall.

To my surprise, Pete had actually become one of my staunchest defenders and was well on the way to becoming a good friend. He was my primary liaison with the crew at the dam, and he was smart, like genius-smart. He had been ten the year of the outbreak, and his dad had been an engineering professor at some big university in California. Pete had learned from him, and taught himself everything else he knew about mechanical and structural engineering from college textbooks that he'd scavenged from libraries all over the country. The stories of his travels with his parents after the outbreak, from the west coast to the east coast, up to Canada, and finally down to Wyoming, were pretty epic entertainment. When we first started working together, he tried to apologize for the way he'd treated me every fucking time we talked, until I threatened to break his nose again. I'm pretty sure he knew I was only kidding about that.

Speaking of apologies, I had one to make that was long overdue. "Hey, Christina." I wouldn't have chosen to invite her to my party; we weren't close, and I was pretty sure she hated me for stealing Joel out from under her and being such a snotty bitch to her all the time. But I liked Pete, and that meant, by extension, I needed to make an effort to get along with Christina. Time for me to face the music.

"Ellie! Happy birthday." Christina's smile was warm and genuine, and I was a little wary until I realized that her hand was slipped into Pete's, and they just looked really, really happy together.

"Thanks," I said, feeling super awkward. "Um, hey, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while...I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being so awful to you all these years. I, uh, have a bit of a mouth on me. And, well, you didn't deserve that."

"Actually, I kind of did." Christina's smile was wry, and her voice still held the soft cadences of the southern state she'd grown up in before the outbreak. Georgia, I think. "I never managed to see you as an adult. I was so fixated on-" she broke off, glancing toward the table, where Joel was drawing barbecue pit plans on a paper plate. She looked up at Pete and smiled. "Anyway, without you, I wouldn't have Pete now. I think what you did for him is the bravest thing I've ever heard."

Pete smiled and kissed her. Aw. They were pretty cute together.

"Hey, Chris, didn't you want to talk to Ellie about that thing?" Pete said.

"Oh, that's right!" She smiled. "Thanks for reminding me. I asked Maria if there was some way I could thank you, and she told me about your...challenges...in the kitchen. If you ever want me to teach you how to bake, or cook, or just some basic techniques..."

"Yes!" I didn't even let her finish. "Oh, my god, yes, that would be amazing. Thank you!"

She laughed and leaned into Pete's shoulder. "Well, you do all the scheduling these days. Just tell me when you want to start."

With the exception of confirming that I was probably carrying a mutant fungus-child, it was a really great party.

* * *

I made my decision later that night, as I lay awake in bed next to Joel's sleeping form. His breathing was deep and even, one hand on his chest and the other reaching out toward me.

I smelled like sex and my muscles were warm and loose from the orgasms he'd given me before he'd dropped off to sleep, but instead of making me sleepy, my post-coital glow just made me feel alert and resolved.

Basically, this was the decision that neither Joel nor Marlene had allowed me to make six years ago, on a smaller and infinitely more personal scale. I couldn't bring myself to feel angry about that anymore; I was too happy to have had this time with Joel and my life here in Jackson for that kind of regret. I knew if Marlene had bothered to ask me, I would have said yes, and I would have fought Joel to let me die back then, but I wouldn't have _wanted_ to die then any more than I did now.

I was still scared, but a rising sense of hope fueled my determination. I ran my fingers over the mass of scar tissue on my right forearm, and thought of Riley, Tess, and Sam. What if my child was born with my immunity? I didn't know what would happen, but if there was a chance that I could pass this on, I needed to take it. And it was worth risking my life to find out.

I was going to have a baby. A whole new person that was part me and part Joel.

I rested one hand on my flat abdomen and touched Joel's fingertips with the other, and he curled his hand around mine in his sleep, a smile on his face. I hoped he would forgive me.

We were going to have a baby.

* * *

Cover Me Up will CONCLUDE soon with Winter (Part 3).


	12. Winter (Part 3)

**Winter (Part 3)**

My boots crunched through the ice-crusted snow as I made my way back to my office from posting next week's duty assignments in the commissary. It had been crisp and clear all day, and the pale February sun just felt like it was mocking me as another subzero gust of wind cut through my coat. I shivered and walked a little faster, pulling my wool hat down farther on my head.

I'd chosen an old bank building in the downtown area as my office. The cornerstone said 1912, and it was one of those solid stone structures with columns and marble and shit that they liked to build back then. It had held up pretty well, except for the windows, which, like most, had been broken out at some point in the past twenty-six years by rioting, looting, the elements, it was impossible to tell. Joel had helped me tack up some hides over the holes that were so thin they actually let some natural light through, so it didn't feel like I was working in a cave all the time.

We'd also knocked a chimney hole in the ceiling and installed a big woodstove right near where we set up the desks. Joel had done the brick hearth and the woodbox himself. Which reminded me: it was my turn to fill up the fucking woodbox again. I sighed. Chopping wood was probably my least favorite chore here, next to weeding sugar beets.

Oh, and I was fourteen weeks pregnant, and I still hadn't told Joel.

Every morning when I saw Doc, he asked me if I'd told Joel, and every morning, his face got longer and longer when I said no.

I was a fucking chicken, was the problem.

This morning, Doc had said, a tone of exasperation in his voice, "Ellie, you do realize that you're going to start showing one of these days? Maria will want to make a public announcement to reassure the town, and you really don't want Joel to find out that way."

"I know, I know!" I'd replied. "I just can't find the right time to tell him." Doc had raised his eyebrows at me until I'd dropped my head. "Okay, I'll tell him tonight." I had absolutely no intention of doing that. My stomach was still flat as a board, and until I was forced by biology to confess, I wasn't going to tell Joel. Things were too good between us right now to ruin it.

"Good. Don't come back to me until he knows. I mean it, Ellie."

"But Maria wants daily tests!"

"If you tell him tonight, that won't be a problem, will it?" He'd smiled at me, and I'd known right then that I'd trapped myself.

I fucking hated it when people called me on my bullshit. I was still mentally punching myself for saying I'd tell Joel tonight when I walked through the door of the office to see Max hunched over her desk, a pencil between her teeth and a frown on her face.

When she saw me, Max stood up and stretched, rolling her shoulders. She was half a foot taller than me, and built like a fucking Amazon. She once told me that her parents were Norwegian. "Hey, boss! Here, have some coffee. I just made it." She waited for me to take off my coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and then pressed a steaming mug into my hand.

"You're promoted to number one deputy." I routinely promoted Sanjay, Max, and Tommy to number one deputy, whenever the whim struck me. I took a big gulp of the bitter chicory, into which Max had poured a generous amount of milk and sugar, and then said, "You know, I think I'm actually starting to like this stuff." I stretched my frozen hands out toward the stove and sighed in contentment as they finally started to thaw out.

"I thought you promoted Sanjay to number one deputy yesterday." Max's voice sounded a little weird, but I was too intent on getting warm to really notice.

"Aw, fuck Sanjay. He'll just have to live with the shame of being number two…"

Max sniffled.

I turned around to look at her and was totally shocked to see her wiping her eyes, her chin wobbling like she was going to burst into tears. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's going on?" I put my hand on her shoulder.

She looked down at me, and her pale blue eyes were red and puffy. "I think Sanjay's cheating on me." She started crying in earnest.

Shit. Shit. God fucking damn it. Okay. Max wasn't normally a cryer. I took her elbow and steered her back to the desk, where she grabbed a handkerchief and used it to wipe her streaming face. "Sorry, sorry, I just…" her voice broke.

I sat on the corner of the desk, cradling the hot mug in my hands for warmth. "Hey, it's okay. You want to tell me what's going on?"

Max gulped and shrugged. "I don't know! Everything was going really well, but for the last few weeks he's been acting really fucking weird."

I frowned. I hadn't noticed any change in Sanjay's behavior, but then again, I wasn't sleeping with him either. "Like what?"

"Like...disappearing for a day and a half and refusing to tell me where he went. Or telling me he was coming over, and then not showing up, and telling me the next day that he accidentally fell asleep. And just generally acting shifty."

"Hm." I took a sip of coffee. "That is a little unlike him," I admitted. "But what makes you think it's an affair?"

"I know I shouldn't have, but I looked through his desk while you were gone. I found this." Max handed me a piece of paper, her face a mask of misery.

With trepidation, I read the note out loud. "I'll meet you Tuesday night near the east gate. You know what to bring."

"See? He met some woman at night for some secret assignation! Tuesday was one of the nights he said he fell asleep. Asshole." Max had passed through crying and straight into anger.

"Max, I don't know what the fuck Sanjay's doing, but I don't think he's having an affair." I was staring at the note like I hoped it might start talking to me.

Max looked up at me and ran her fingers through her short, white-blonde hair. "Why? Why do you say that?"

I pressed my lips into a grim line. "Because this is Joel's fucking handwriting." And that meant Joel had lied to me, too, goddammit. I should have known his story about helping Arthur Chan pulling calves on Tuesday night was fucking bogus. Joel didn't know a fucking thing about cows. I'd just been so relieved that none of the blood on his clothes had been his, I hadn't asked too many questions. Motherfuckers! They'd gone outside again, I just knew it. What the fuck were they up to?

I quickly told Max the story, and concluded with, "I don't know what's going on, but Joel and I are going to have a little talk about this note. And all that blood. I really am going to arrest that asshole this time. Going outside the walls without getting permission from Maria first is against the rules." I would be really pissed if I actually had to arrest Joel, no matter how much I regularly threatened to do it, but I was so fucking furious that he'd broken his promise to me that I was ready to do just that. I glanced over at my pristine jail cell. Joel had installed the bars over the windows and the barred door himself. It would be pretty ironic if he was my first prisoner.

I unclipped my walkie from my hip and keyed it. "Maria, this is Ellie."

There was a short burst of static, and then Maria's voice said, "Go ahead."

"Are you anywhere near the sheriff's office? I need to talk to you." I didn't want to air this dirty laundry over a public channel.

"I'll be right there."

I paced the floor while I waited for Maria to show up. I was going to fucking kill Joel for lying to me.

Max sat on the corner of her desk and watched me. "I can't believe they would do something that stupid."

"Max!" I exploded at her. "Those two idiots went outside in December just to get fucking pepper for that barbecue. I'd say the past evidence is against them. They're the whole reason Maria had to lay down a formal rule about getting permission to leave in the first place."

Max winced. "I know! That's what I meant. Sanjay's a deputy. I just can't believe he'd break the law like that. And Joel's living with the damn sheriff."

"Yeah, well, Joel used to break the law for a living. Maybe old habits die hard." Oh, I was _so_ going to kill him.

Max was silent for a second. "If Sanjay was going to go outside, I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have watching his back, except for maybe you."

I ground my teeth together. "That's not the fucking point. They have no right to put themselves at risk like that. Fucking pepper, fucking little shit...it's too fucking dangerous out there, and none of that shit is worth risking their fucking lives for!"

Maria came into the office and joined me near the woodstove. "Hey, what's up? I only have a few minutes."

"Maria, I have evidence that Joel and Sanjay went outside the city walls a few nights ago. If they did it without your permission, I'm going to fucking arrest them both. Did you know about this?" I said.

"Yes, I knew. They had permission," Maria answered calmly.

"I...wait, what?" I said, my anger momentarily derailed by confusion.

"I said they had permission. It was all legal and above board, and no arrests are necessary. Are we done here? Because I've got a lot of stuff to..."

"Oh, no you don't." My anger was back, but now it was directed at Maria. "What the fuck were they doing out there? Fucking Joel promised me he wouldn't go outside without telling me first, and he fucking lied, and I want to know why he would risk his fucking life without at least letting me know about it!" I yelled.

Maria gave me a pointed look. "Think about what you just said, Ellie."

I felt myself flush with shame. I guess I wasn't the only one keeping dangerous secrets. How could I be angry with Joel for putting himself at risk without telling me, when I was basically doing the same thing to him? "That's different," I mumbled.

Max was looking at the two of us in confusion. "I don't know what you two are talking about, but I for one would fucking like to know what my boyfriend was doing outside the walls."

Maria snapped her eyes to Max. "I can't tell you that."

"Can't, or won't?" I asked.

"Take your pick." Maria sighed and rubbed her eyes, and I realized that she looked more tired than usual. "Look, guys, what I can tell you is that you'll find out soon. And you won't be angry about it. You'll just have to trust me on this. Now, I have about thirty fires to put out, so I'll see you tonight." And with that, she hurried out.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Maria, I did. It was just that I couldn't think of a single thing on the outside that would be important enough to warrant this.

Max smiled weakly at me. "I can see you're upset, but is it bad that this makes me feel better?"

"What, because misery loves company?" I glared at her.

"No! Because it means Sanjay wasn't meeting some skank after all. I've been afraid...I..." she looked at me and took a deep breath. "I've been starting to wonder if maybe I'm the rebound girl."

"Rebound? You mean from me?" Max knew that Sanjay had carried a torch for me for years.

Max held up her hands. "I know there was never anything between you two. But, fuck, Ellie. I'm embarrassed to admit how jealous I was of you when Sanjay and I first got together. I was always wondering if he was comparing us in his mind."

I laughed, the knot of anger in my chest finally loosening a little. "If it makes you feel any better, I was always jealous of you."

Max looked bewildered. "Me? Why?"

"Because you work with Joel, and you guys spend all that time bonding over electrical wiring, or whatever the fuck you do, and getting all sweaty together. Joel used to tease me about it."

"Well," Max said, her face speculative, "Joel does look pretty good in a sweaty t-shirt."

I glared at her, but there was no heat behind it. Plus I had to smile at the thought of Joel in a sweaty t-shirt. "Don't make me demote you to number two deputy."

She grinned. "All right. Whatever's going on, they're trying to keep it secret from us. I guess we could just wait and see. Sanjay's a terrible liar, so he's bound to crack at some point."

"Or," I held up the note again, "I could confront Joel about this fucking note." That was more my style than wait and see.

"No, don't!" Her face was guilty. "I don't want Sanjay to know I went through his stuff. I feel like such an asshole."

"Oh, fine." I tucked the note into my pocket. "But I'm going to be watching Joel like a fucking hawk."

"And how is that different from every day?" Max asked, smiling archly. "I see how you watch him."

I blushed. "I can't help it. The man knows how to wear a pair of jeans."

Max smiled a dreamy smile. "Have you ever noticed how Sanjay's arms are, like, really wiry and toned? I fucking love that."

We both sighed, momentarily lost in admiration for our respective partners, and then Max jumped. "Shit. What time is it?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, around two?"

She cursed. "I have to go. I promised the Allens I'd take a look at the lights in their kitchen before the big do tonight. You good here?"

"I'm good, just got a ton of fucking paperwork, but I guess I can handle that myself. Get going. Hey, Max," I called as she headed out the door, "If you get there before me tonight, save me a good seat!"

"I will! And Ellie..." she paused in the doorway. "Thanks for listening earlier. It's nice to have someone to talk to about girl stuff for once."

I smiled. I couldn't have said it better. "You retain your position as number one deputy. I'll see you tonight."

* * *

"This was a stupid idea," Joel growled. "I got no business doin' this."

I kissed him. "Joel, you'll be great." I had decided to trust Maria and not to mention the note, or the trip outside. Besides, I didn't exactly have the moral high ground here.

"I'd rather be fightin' an entire pack of clickers." He scowled at me so fiercely that the lines in his forehead looked like they were carved there.

I laughed and handed him his guitar. "Just imagine everyone in the audience naked. That's what Maria told me to do when I started speaking in public."

Joel finally smiled, and his eyes lit with with a familiar fire that made my heart pound. "I'll imagine you naked." He kissed me hard, his tongue invading my mouth and leaving me breathless.

Damn the man. He could be such a fucking tease. It was really hard to stay mad at him. "Get out there before I have to drag you back home and have my way with you."

He grinned. "Temptress."

"Tease."

He kissed my nose tenderly and put his free arm around me, balancing the guitar on the toe of his boot and holding me to his chest.

I leaned my forehead into his neck, taking a big breath filled with the scent of his skin, and smiled. Whatever that note meant, whatever he'd really been up to that night he came home with blood on his shirt, it could wait. _I love you so much, Joel,_ I thought. _Please don't hate me when you find out you're going to have another kid._ The whiskered stubble on his neck was sharp against my lips, and I could feel his pulse beating steadily under his skin. I took another deep breath of him, and said, "I'd better go sit down, before I start ripping your clothes off."

Joel looked down at me. "That would be an entirely different kinda show."

"That's what I'm saying. Plus I'd have to arrest us both for public indecency." I gave him one last hard kiss and said, "Okay. I'm going to go find Max."

I made my way from the kitchen of the VFW hall to where the tables were set up in front of the tiny stage, and scanned the crowd for Max and Sanjay, who'd promised to save me a good seat. Jeez, there were a lot of people here. It looked like more than half the town showed up for the concert, which made sense because we didn't get a chance to hear live music very often. No wonder Joel was so nervous.

I caught sight of Max, and she waved me over to a table right near the stage. Tommy and Maria were sitting a couple of tables away, and I waved to them. "Hey, nice work getting prime seats!" I said, as I draped my coat over the back of a chair and sat down. "Where's Sanjay?"

"Joel reserved the table for us, actually. He wanted you to be up front for moral support." Max grinned. "And Sanjay is just where he should be: bringing us beer."

"Oh, thank god. I didn't want to fight that line." I looked over to the back corner of the hall where the bar was set up; easily half the crowd was queued up there for drinks. I could see Sanjay wending his way over to the table, carefully holding three full glasses together in his hands.

Oh, yes. Beer. I totally deserved it tonight. Doc had told me that an occasional beer wouldn't hurt the little fungus monster inside me, which was still hiding out in my pelvis despite being about the size of a lemon at present, and after all that fucking paperwork, I really needed one. Not to mention the fact that I had to work up my courage to tell Joel the happy fucking news tonight.

When Sanjay set the beer down on the table in front of me, I sighed happily. "Thanks, man." He looked at me expectantly. "Oh, fine. Number one deputy. Sorry, Max."

Sanjay grinned and said to Max, "Isn't she the best boss ever?" He leaned over to kiss her.

I took a tiny sip of my well-deserved alcoholic beverage, the dark brew thick and deliciously bitter in my mouth. I couldn't have more than one, so I was damn sure going to enjoy this one. Joel snatched the glass out of my hand. I hadn't even seen him walking towards us, he just appeared beside me like magic. "Thanks, baby. I needed this." He whisked himself off again to the kitchen, leaving me open-mouthed and empty-handed.

"Did that just fucking happen?" I asked the table in general, laughing. I wasn't too upset, Joel probably needed it more than I did. I stood up and glared at the long line in front of the bar. "Do you think people would get too pissed off if I arrested everyone in line, just until I got my beer?"

Max laughed, and said, "Sounds a little drastic. It looks like things are about to start soon, and I don't want you to miss anything. You can take mine, and I'll go stand in line for more." She hopped up and pushed her way through the crowd.

"Number one deputy!" I yelled after her. She waved back, laughing. I snagged her beer, one of Maurice's lagers, and took a big sip, smiling in satisfaction.

"Hey, Max, bring me another?" Sanjay called. He was watching her walk away with big puppy-dog eyes. This was definitely not a man who was cheating on his girlfriend.

I narrowed my eyes at him and said, "I know you're up to something."

He jumped in his seat and looked at me, his face stricken. "What are you talking about? Up to something? I'm not up to something. I don't know what you mean. Oh, hey, look, the show is starting." Jesus, Max was right. Sanjay couldn't lie for shit.

Tommy had jumped up on the stage, which was empty except for a chair and a guitar stand. He put two fingers in his mouth and gave an ear-splitting whistle. I sighed in envy. I'd never been able to figure out the finger whistle. "Hey, y'all, quiet down!" It took a few moments for the noise level to drop enough for him to speak normally, but eventually he continued. "Now, some of y'all have already heard, but we kinda blew up the only working sound system in town a few nights back, so that means all y'all gotta be quiet and listen. If you get too raucous, I'm sure the sheriff and her number one deputy…" he pointed to himself with his thumbs.

Sanjay interrupted. "You're behind the times, man. Max just got promoted!"

There was a wave of laughter; the whole town was in on our little joke. I guess I did the promotion bit a lot. Tommy looked at me and clutched his heart. "I promise I'll do better, boss! Anyway, like I was sayin', the law is here tonight, and we will be happy to escort your ass out into the snow if you're interferin' with other people's enjoyment of the music. So sit down, shut up, and please give a hand to my big brother, Joel Miller, your entertainment for the evening!"

There was a wave of applause, and Joel hopped up onto the stage and ambled to the center, his guitar strapped around his shoulder. He was wearing a pair of jeans that rode low on his narrow hips and a tight white t-shirt under one of his ubiquitous flannel shirts, and his hair shone silver in the lights. He looked good enough to eat.

He grinned. Any hint of his earlier nervousness was undetectable. "Thanks, y'all. Ah, this first song is dedicated to our sheriff." There were a few catcalls from the crowd as Joel grinned again and winked at me. I flushed. He was going to start off with a song for me? He'd refused to tell me his set list or even practice while I was home. I had no idea what to expect.

Joel set his pick in his fingers and strummed a few chords to check his tuning, and then he broke into a fast, driving rhythm with a descending three-chord pattern.

_Wait a minute, this isn't some sappy love ballad,_ I thought. _I know this...it's…_

Joel sang, "Breakin' rocks in the hot sun…"

Oh, my god. I giggled out loud. It was The Clash.

"...I fought the law and the law won…"

"I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON!" The entire room joined in on the repeat.

I laughed my way through the entire song, singing along with the choruses. I was clutching my stomach by the end, and tears were streaming down my face. At the end of the song, I leapt to my feet and clapped so hard my hands hurt. Joel was practically beaming at me, and it felt indescribably good to see him smiling like that.

Max, who had come back with the beer halfway through the song, said, "Holy shit, Ellie! I had no idea he could play like that!"

I nodded. Truth was, I'd had no idea either. When Joel played at home he was always playing for himself, or just for me, and he usually stuck to quiet, fingerpicked ballads. But on stage, in front of an audience, he was electric. I couldn't look away.

He let us quiet down, and then he launched into "I Walk the Line," by Johnny Cash. As I listened and watched him, totally enraptured by this unexpected new side of a man I thought I knew inside and out, I realized that every song he sang was a not-so-veiled message, directly to me. "Have I Told You Lately," by Van Morrison. Johnny Cash again, with "Ring of Fire," and "I Will" by the Beatles. "If I Needed You," by Townes van Zandt, "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You," by Elvis, and "He Stopped Loving Her Today," by George Jones. When he did "Howling at the Moon," by Hank Williams, he had the whole room laughing and howling like dogs.

And when he sang the chorus to Warren Zevon's "Don't Let Us Get Sick," I saw people wiping their eyes and singing along: "_Don't let us get sick, don't let us get old, don't let us get stupid, all right? Just make us be brave, and make us play nice, and let us be together tonight._"

Even though Joel said that he'd died before the pandemic, I wondered what Warren Zevon would think if he knew he'd written such a prescient anthem for our post-apocalyptic times.

He'd been playing for nearly two hours straight when he said, "I got a couple more songs before we call it a night. This next one is a special request for my friend Sanjay." He nodded to our table. Sanjay nodded back, his smile fixed and frozen. And I realized like a flash out the blue that whatever they'd been up to, it had something to do with whatever was about to happen.

Joel started playing one of those old R&B ballad riffs. Even though he'd said it was a request for Sanjay, when he started singing "When a Man Loves a Woman," he was looking right into my eyes. I got lost there for a minute. I had no idea what was going on around me until the last verse, when I heard Max gasp beside me. I tore my eyes from Joel's face and swiveled my neck around to see Max with her hands to her mouth, and her blue eyes bright with tears. Sanjay was down on one knee on the floor beside her, holding out the biggest fucking sapphire ring I'd ever seen.

Oh, my god.

I could see Sanjay's lips moving, but I couldn't hear what he said. I clearly understood Max's emphatic nod, though, and when they stood up and started making out right there, Joel said, over the last chords of the song, "She said yes! Looks like we've got another wedding to plan!" The entire room got to their feet and cheered. We loved weddings here. The community was small so there weren't very many of them, but we all loved the opportunity to throw a big party, and weddings were definitely more fun than funerals.

I was so happy, I thought I was going to burst.

Joel's smile was at least as big as mine. After the room finally quieted down again, he said, "It's been fun, y'all. This last song is for Ellie."

I recognized Pete's voice from somewhere near the back of the room, calling, "You can't fool us, Joel! All of those songs were for Ellie!"

I blushed at the big wave of laughter and catcalls that swept the room, and Joel smiled a deep, satisfied smile that made his eyes wrinkle but made him look younger at the same time. "Guilty as charged, Pete. But this one is special."

He slipped his pick into his pocket and picked out the first phrase with his fingers; I knew what it was almost from the first note. He was playing our song, "Cover Me Up," the song that had been playing at the midsummer festival when we'd first kissed.

I honestly didn't know it was possible for me to feel more in love, but for those few minutes while he was singing that song for me, it was like the rest of the world disappeared and Joel was the center of the universe. I could feel the bond between us almost like a physical tether, like the force of gravity between the earth and the moon. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever happened tonight when I told him, that bond would never be in danger of breaking. It was a force of nature all its own.

* * *

I was so fucking proud of Joel I couldn't stop smiling. After the final handshake, and the final joke, and the final congratulations, and the final hug goodbye, we found ourselves walking home together alone, hand-in-hand. Or, glove-in-glove actually. It was still fucking freezing. Joel had his guitar slung over his shoulder in a soft case that he called his gig bag.

"Careful, it's still icy here," he said, leading me around a particularly messy patch of sidewalk. It hadn't snowed in a few weeks, but it had been cold enough that the last snow we'd had was still on the ground.

"So," I said, looking up at him. "How did it feel? Performing, after all this time?"

He dropped his eyes to the ground, a shy smile on his lips. "It felt good."

"Good?"

His smile widened. "Real good."

I snorted. "I need to teach you some new words. Have you ever heard cockmuncher?"

He shouted with laughter and kissed the top of my head. "God, I love you, Ellie." He didn't say it out loud very often, so it was kind of momentous when he did. He stopped right there, in the middle of the sidewalk. "Marry me."

I couldn't even breathe. "What?"

He looked so disconcerted and uncomfortable that I almost started to laugh, but that would have ruined the moment, so I held it in. "I been wantin' to ask you for a while. I just...I ain't exactly got good memories of bein' married. But...Ellie...I can't..." he struggled for words, intense emotion burning in his eyes. "I can't..._breathe_ without you."

I couldn't speak. All I could think was that I wished I'd told him about the baby before this.

"Say something," he said. I could tell he was trying not to let me hear any desperation in his voice, but I could anyway.

"I...I...ask me again in twenty minutes!" I blurted.

"What?" This obviously wasn't the response he'd been expecting.

"I just...I have something to tell you first. But please let me wait until we get home, I don't want to do it out here on the street. And then if you still want to ask me, I promise I'll say yes." I didn't know if I was even making any sense.

"Okay." He had dropped my hand when he stopped, and he didn't take it again when we started walking. His face was back to its usual granite stoicism, but I could tell my refusal to answer him right away had hurt him. We walked the rest of the way home in separate silence, and I thought I could feel a wall building between us with every step.

Inside the front door, we took off our winter outerwear and hung it up before Joel finally broke the silence. "So, what was it you wanted to tell me?"

"Upstairs," I said. I trudged up each step like I was walking to my own execution, my feet as heavy as lead. Joel was going to be so, so angry with me. Losing Sarah was still a raw wound for him, and the prospect of another kid would be a hard one for him to wrap his head around. Why the fuck had I waited so long? My misery was concentrated into a burning knot that felt like it was shredding my chest apart. In a desperate attempt to lighten the mood, I said, "I know it was for a good cause and all, but I still can't believe Maria approved you and Sanjay going outside just for some worthless ring. And on a related note, where's my big fucking rock?" I stopped right outside the closed door to our bedroom.

There was a tiny smile on Joel's face. "I knew you'd have no use for something like that. You use your hands too much." He was quiet for a second. "That's one of the things I love about you. But I did get you something. Actually, I made you something. It's in the bedroom."

"It is?" I started to push the door open.

"Besides," he continued, "That's not what we went out there for. Maria never would have agreed to that."

I saw a dark shape in the corner of the bedroom, something that hadn't been there when I left this morning, but I couldn't tell what it was. "Oh? Then what _did_ you go out for?" I reached out to flip the light switch on.

Joel grabbed my hand before I turned on the light. He held me like that, in dark suspense, for a long, tense moment, before he finally said, "An ultrasound machine." And then he reached past me and turned the switch on.

"Oh..." My eyes filled with tears. In the corner of our room, near Joel's side of the bed, was a wooden crib.

I walked forward and touched it with shaking fingers. It was unvarnished, but sanded and polished to a soft, satiny finish, and it had obviously been made by hand, with loving and painstaking attention to detail. A colorful mobile of moons and stars hung from the ceiling over the crib.

Joel's hand touched my shoulder. "Now will you marry me?"

I turned around. I don't think I could have been more stunned if he'd grown a second head and started speaking in fucking Chinese. "You knew," I breathed.

"I knew."

"Maria fucking _told_ you!" I was going to fucking kill her.

Joel's grin lit up his whole face. "I'm not a fucking idiot, Ellie. And this ain't exactly my first rodeo." He put his arms around me and kissed my forehead. "You obviously didn't want to talk about it, so I went to Doc after I figured it out, and he and Maria agreed to keep me in the loop." He quoted, "'Cordyceps present in the amniotic fluid, but not at levels infectious to humans.' So we're doing good so far."

"This could still all go so wrong," I said into his chest.

"I know. That's why we needed the ultrasound machine," he said reasonably.

"Aren't you angry?"

"Oh, sweetheart." He held me tight. "You know me. I was angry, at first. But the way you look at the world...the way you _hope_...it rubs off on everyone around you. Even a cynical old cuss like me, I guess. What if our child is immune, like you?" The cautious hope in his eyes made my breath catch. "What if...what if Marlene was wrong and _this_ is the answer, the thing that'll save us in the end? Not a cure or a vaccine, but an evolution? It's..." He shook his head. "I'm afraid of the risk to you. The thought of you bein' in danger and not bein' able to do anything about it just about drives me outta my mind. And I'm afraid of bein' a dad again, and I'm definitely too old for it, but...I'm excited, Ellie. I'm actually looking forward to the future, and that hasn't happened in a long goddamn time." He bent down to kiss my lips, his mouth gentle and soft against mine. I felt the barest touch of his tongue on my lower lip before he drew back and looked searchingly into my eyes.

I reached up and laid a hand on his cheek, his beard scratchy against my callused palm. Something in Joel had changed, I realized. That knot of anger he always carried around with him, the one he relied on to protect himself, was gone. He had dropped every wall for me. I looked at him in wonder. _Did I do that?_ "Joel..."

He kissed my hand and said, "I been your partner for a long time now, Ellie. Let's make it official. Make an honest man outta me."

I laughed breathlessly and said, "That sounds like a big job." Happiness was fizzing up in me like bubbles in a bottle of beer that had just been shaken. I kissed him, pressing my lips hard against his, and pushing my tongue against his lips until he opened them and let me slide into his mouth. I stroked the sides of his tongue with mine, in long, slow movements that left him panting for breath into my mouth.

He turned his head aside and rested his forehead against mine. "You still haven't answered me."

"I said I'd say yes if you asked again." I sank sharp teeth into his neck, just above his collarbone, tasting the salt of his skin. He gripped my shoulders.

"So," he sucked my earlobe between his teeth, and slithered his tongue into my ear. I moaned. "That's a yes, then?" His voice was barely a whisper, his lips so close that his mustache tickled my ear.

I pulled his head down to kiss him again, hungrily devouring his mouth with mine. I could feel him growing hard against my abdomen as I pressed our bodies together, and I thought, _Yes. Yes to this, as much as we can, for as long as we have time on this earth together. Yes._

I drew back, gasping as his lips left mine. "Yes," I said. "Now take your clothes off."

* * *

**Author's Note**

Wow, what a ride writing this story has been! I can hardly believe it's over. Ellie and Joel stormed in a took over my life (Ellie particularly, because she shouts the loudest), and now, sixty-thousand some-odd words later, it's hard to let go.

I'd like to give special thanks to Luciferine and blackanise for their encouragement and thoughtful feedback. You guys helped keep me sane when this thing wanted to eat my soul. If any of my readers out there haven't read their stuff, go do it immediately. It's phenomenal writing, and great Ellie/Joel shipping. I'll wait.

*twiddles thumbs*

See? I told you so. You're welcome.

Thanks are also due to my wonderful spouse, Mr. Mac, who is a genuine Texan and the real source for many of Joel's Texanisms, as well as my advisor on all things gun-, horse-, and barbecue-related. Love you, babe.

Also big thanks to everyone who reviewed regularly: thatchickontheinternet, Giruvega, doomsta27, Bostontex24, warfolomei, .x, elliethekocher (on FanFiction) and beejabbers, michell, Kello (on AO3). I know how hard it is to commit to a WIP, because it's just so heartbreaking when authors abandon a story you love, or keep you waiting so long that you forget what already happened. Thank you guys for being there from the beginning and sticking with it.

Fourth and lastly, I need to get back to other, non-fandom stories, but TLoU may not be done with me yet. If you've got a great story idea for me, or want to ask me any questions about this or The Lies We Tell, or if you just want to internet-stalk me, I'm on Tumblr as catrionamacwrites ( .com). Use the Ask button. I'll respond.

Until the next story,

Cat


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